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 Well, maybe it’s a stretch to begin singing these words to the tune of that all-American (or Alabama) song, but Jinja, Uganda is beginning to feel like home to me. Granted, I am an awkward new resident, struggling through a new language, new customs, and new traffic rules (or lack thereof). Most of the things I see, say, and do in this place seem surreal, like waking up in the morning to a rooster crowing and a mosquito net over my bed, or calling my teammate Spencer to ask, “can I come over and cut down some of your bamboo to plant green beans in my garden.” And yet I know these new experiences are unmistakably real, if only from their contrast from the synthetic environment I’ve come from. The natural world has always been a gracious host to me.
But it is my Ugandan hosts and their collective culture that draws me into their community and leads me to call this place home. Back in August I received an email from Lazarus, a sharp man who I now work with at the Source, which provided fuel for my journey, and has turned out to be prophetic. He told me, “Let your family members that you’re leaving have good news for them because the family is expanding to Africa. Know you are leaving home to home.” Hearing those words as he wrote them was a double affirmation of my present home and my future home that I needed so much during a time when I was living between the two. So while Jinja, Uganda bears little resemblance to the places I have called home for the first thirty years of my life, the people here have made Jinja home for me, an awkward resident. Their willingness to embrace me and my family to laugh with us (and at us), play with our children,` share life with us, and dream of the possibilities for God’s Kingdom in Busoga, expands my definition of community through actions in addition to words. I have left home to home.
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