Begin Again
19 April 2023
Well I never thought I’d start again here in this place. Uganda. With my iPad trying to type as fast as my brain was thinking. I haven’t written like this in over a decade because I just physically couldn’t bring myself to. Never could I have dreamed that I’d be sitting at this pink bamboo table, coffee empty since I’ve been awake since the early hours. Gerald Sseruwagi brought me here to Cassia Lodge all these years ago except at that time I had four to five large trunks of my belongings and this time, just a small suitcase with 12 days worth of underwear and temporary necessities.
At that time, I was coming to Uganda to stay forever.
This time I know my plane leaves in 4 days.
I remember that first morning when I got here. It was bewildering to wake up. I was 19. It’s one thing to plan and dream and act on what you believe God’s calling on your life is, it’s entirely another to get on the plane, to arrive in a foreign land, where you are the unusual one, to wake up to the sounds of the morning prayers at the nearby mosque, to hear the rooster crowing outside your window, and to wake up realizing you actually did it. But then what? It’s an overwhelming experience. Every one of your senses is looking to you and asking ‘what is this? What do I do now?’
I came to Uganda all those years ago because as much as one can experience the leading of God, hear His voice, be confirmed by the people around you, all things provided for to usher you into that leading, they were all things I was led by. At first I felt a strong sense of attachment to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why? I have no idea. It was just so. Do you ever have that feeling? Why do I long to sit on a certain rock in a certain cove in La Jolla? Why is it that chair in our country home that overlooks the pond seems irresistible to me?
These places are memories of a longing for another world. And the very nature of desiring these places, must mean that there is a very real place where I’ll feel all of those things again but in full force. I have struggled deeply to talk about my recent two weeks in Uganda because the words in my brain are too many, too big to formulate words from my mouth. I’m hoping I can tell these stories here.
Oh, I’m Chloe by the way! More to come.