It's Dark and Uganda is Hot

I don’t mean to equate Uganda to hell, but simply want to describe Kampala at 8pm while using DMX as the inspiration that he is in all our lives. In the last 48 hours I’ve gotten around eight hours of sleep, traveled over 7500 miles, and drank enough airplane wine to make British Airways reconsider their serving policies. So needless to say, I’m slightly delirious and mentally taking a personal trip to the moon; hence the reference to the album that “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem” made.

I landed in Entebbe around 8am, and the day has been a whirlwind since then. I went straight to a coaches meeting where I was greeted with chants and claps, headed to Ndejje to help teach a lesson and see old students, and dragged my roommates around Kabalagala in a successful search for Amaruala (Houston, we have a problem).

The power just went off at the house, and I feel at home and at peace. I’m still trying to figure out why, but it feels like I’ve never left, yet I’m seeing my surroundings under a different lens. Part of it is due to the fact that I know what to expect, and I submitted myself to that before leaving Dulles, where as last year I was going in blind. I also don’t think I’m a jerk kid with no clue of what he’s doing anymore, but now a jerk kid with a small sense of the outside world and the reasons a program like Soccer Without Borders exists. Really though, it has to do with the smile on Samuel’s face when he picked me up at the airport, hearing Rapha ask where I was before he entered the center, and every other interaction I made with friends I hadn’t seen in close to a year. A sense of home is a sense of genuineness, and there is nothing more in abundance in this country than pure kindness.

I have no sage words of conclusion. The power is back on, my roommates and I are about to a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother, and I’m waking up at 8am to play a match with the U-17’s before lessons begin. It’s good to be back.