I promise, I will soon grace the pages of this blog with some pictures. Sadly, I forgot to bring along my camera cord this weekend so it will have to wait.

This last week Melissa and I spent our mornings in filter construction and our afternoons in language lessons. The construction site we were at has four moulds, so we built four filters a day. A couple of beneficiaries would come from the community to build their own filters, and we would build the rest. It felt good to dust off some of those manual labour skills from my job with the Town of Three Hills a couple of years ago. I am still infinitely weaker that my Ugandan coworkers but they were very gracious and let me be involved in all the aspects of construction. I feel pretty confident now about the actual construction of a filter. This next week we will be focusing more on properly installing them, and I am looking forward to learning more about that aspect of the BSF as well.

If you have ever had any cross-cultural training I’m sure you have heard of the different stages of culture shock. The honeymoon, rejection, acceptance, adaptation, etc, etc. The first time I came to Uganda in 2001 I was just moving into the acceptance phase when it was time for me to leave. When I returned in 2006 I remember being pleasantly surprised that I was picking up where I left off. I felt comfortable and safe, and at home in a small sense. By the time I was getting ready to leave I was starting to think about building life in a totally new culture. Now I am back in Uganda for a third time and once again picking up where I left off, thinking about living and working here for years instead of months. I know that I can adjust to no running water, no electricity, no phones or supermarkets. My fear is loneliness, and I don’t know if I can adjust to that.

Whenever I leave the privacy of my house I am instantly a spectacle. When I walk down the street I am bombarded by the constant shouts and greetings of almost everyone I pass. I know that every conversation is about me as I walk by. I know that hundreds of eyes are staring in my direction, curious, leering, suspicious, delighted. This last week, in a hushed voice, one of my coworkers asked my partner and I how we could get him to Canada. My heart sank. I am still just a mzungu, an opportunity, a pile of money, a white. That is how it feels, at least. It all makes me wonder if I can ever really enter into a community here. How long do I have to stay before I will become a person with a name and a personality and not just a skin tone? Is it possible?

These questions are heavy on my heart as I ponder God’s direction for my future. I think of the rich community of friends, family and church that I have in Canada and I experience the loss of my familiar feeling of belonging. However, instead of seeing this experience as something that is robbing me of my community, I want to see is as an opportunity to expand my community. I want to learn how to do that. I want to have faith that wherever God sends me is where I belong. I want to learn that it is impossible for me to be alone.