The Break Down

"We talk about these things and then we feel better."

Mbale is already so much different from Kampala. Instead of accosted, you feel respected. Instead of objectified, you feel like a guest. A Mt. Elgon-looking rock looms in the distance and everything around here feels like Hawaii--just with a lot of Africans running around. We're going to hike that rock one of these days.

I'm so happy with the staff people we work with: Patrick, Paul 1-2-and-3, Livingston, Miriam, Vicki, Susan, and Moses. I couldn't think of better people to work with.

Yesterday was our orientation and, for me, my hardest day in Africa actually. Since I've been here, I've been aware that I'm nothing of interest in comparison to European skin, but being in a more intimate environment, these feelings are magnified to the extreme. Livingston took Meghan and I on a walk yesterday to get us acquainted with the area, and little beautiful children would see Meghan coming from up the road. They'd call the whole child-clan to greet her as she passed by! She was making their whole decade. If they came to shake our hands, they kneeled to Meghan first and then, with prodding from Livingstone, would come shake my hand out of courtesy. As we kept walking around, people would look past Livingston and I, to laugh and smile at Meghan greeting them in their tribal language. Livingston spent most of the time talking to Meghan--I trailed behind feeling ignored. I knew none of this was intentional--just the way things were. I was not obviously foreign and was therefore less interesting. I wondered bitterly what was I going to do when I went to the village. Research was going to be impossible if I kept on being disregarded like this. Walking freely into political offices was going to be much harder than I had previously believed. I thought with much chagrin, "this whole thing would be much easier if I had been born white".

Ugh. White skin wins again.

Back home in America, I have to forget that I'm different. I am not given the chance to have a unique perspective very often because everyone's so concerned with being "color-blind" and the more we avoid talking about race or acknowledging that race has dynamic contributions, the better. But the "middle-ground" culture we communicate from is actually white culture, and so to function in society, I take it on and live "outside" my skin. In Africa, I'm not given a chance to have a unique perspective because I just look like some strange African they can't place geographically and I don't have anything interesting to say or look at because I'm not white (even though I'm American too). Or I'm just synonymous with Obama. To them, Meghan is gorgeous and I am not. Meghan is brilliant and I am not. Meghan is esteemed and I am not. Holding tears back, the final blow came as we neared the office. A man on the staff bee-lined towards Meghan, shaking her hand and praising "You're welcome! You're most welcome!" laughing and joking and then after (since its impolite to not greet everyone), he shook Livingstone's hand, and then my own limply, without saying a word, returning quickly back to Meghan to talk to her. I took my bag and walked as quickly to the bathroom as possible. Chopped liver. I sank to the floor and cried for ten minutes. I cried and cried and cried. I'm worse than an African-American. I am nothing at all.

It's not anyone's fault. It's funny how race takes on a value, life, and system of its own. Does it have to be this way? I don't know. I do know I have to bear my most of my burdens alone here and when I return to Kampala because no one will be able to remotely understand because its so far from their realities. I'm having an identity crisis. I'm just a piece of unassuming, brown wallpaper. I don't mean to sound calloused--I just wanted to be honest about what's going on in this heart. I'd trade this anguish if I could. Yesterday, all I wanted to do was be back home with people who love me and think my existence has weight. Meghan and I talked about it a little in the afternoon. She felt really uncomfortable being singled-out by Africans. We hashed out race for a little while--it was a good conversation. "That's why I think I like artists so much. We talk about these things that have no answers and then we feel better."

So I still feel really awful, and lonely, and invisible, but I think this is something I'll just have to get used to. I'll resist the urge to become a silent space-taker-upper. Today is better than yesterday. If I focus on that, perhaps it won't be so bad. Maybe that's the foundation of humility. Maybe what is indicative of transformation is stripping away the decorum and cutting the bows away. Welcome to the change process.