Webale Okusima. (Thank you for appreciating).

Last night was neck-craning night. Jenny, you know my favorite time of day, when I’m not changing my mind by the hour. But do you know my favorite type of night sky? No, because I didn’t either until last night. But good guess.
When.the.clouds.are.so.freaking.white.and.bright.because.they.are.overlapping.the.moon.and.it.is.freaking.beautiful.

I noticed this because we were all outside “sending off” an unexpected visitor/dinner guest we had last night. Sam. Have I mentioned that the entire family goes outside to see someone off when they leave the house? It’s a beautiful, communal sort of thing.

Walking home last night was funny, because I break the fashion rules on a regular basis lately. Just get me on a plane already so I can wear what I want and not be laughed at.
But when you are breaking the fashion rules, you shouldn’t coincidentally pass the high school at the same moment hundreds of kids are pouring out the doors to walk home. Yikes.
See, you already know it is rainy season. Which means, walk to school in gum boots. The boots the Ugandans wear when they are gardening. Which also means, no matter what the roads or weather are like on the way home, you are still in gum boots. So it’s bright and sunny (sunny enough that people are carrying umbrellas to block the sun) and you are in rainboots. Oh. Well. They’re. Awesome.
The kids walking behind me kept laughing and saying, “Mzungu, you are smart,” smart in the “classily dressed” sense.
I told them “Osaga,” –“you are joking”—to show that I’m very well aware that what I’m wearing isn’t normal so leave me alone already. It’s bad enough being stared at all the way home, and asked for your contact because they’ve always wanted a pen pal. But when they laugh at you…oh well.

I kept walking. About 47 seconds after I yelled, “Osaga!” after them, 3 or 4 really young kids noticed me from their house and started running to the road.
“Oli mulunji,” one said.
And for the next block or so they all kept yelling, “Mzungu, oli mulunji!” over and over. I felt like God was wasting no time—only 47 seconds—to counteract the insults with compliments.
An older boy caught up with me:
“The children are commenting that you’re beautiful. Are you?”
(Hah: how do you answer that?) “I heard them.”
“You heard them. But did you understand?”
“Yes. Oli mulunji. I told them ‘Webale.’ (thank you) But they might just be making fun of these boots.”
“No. They are not making fun.”

I went home early last night to pack. To pack. A crazy infinitive: yikes.
It was the first time, I think, I’ve ever packed without music.
As I was packing, Suzan walked in the room and gave me a gift. She put a few fake flowers in an empty body lotion container. She said, “A remembrance. I want this to show you that I have loved you so much.”
When I got home, I had given Suzan a picture of us two. She screamed, leaped, and threw it in the air (it got bent this way). She ran to her room and put it in her photo album. First page.

Anyway, as I was packing I decided to leave a lot of stuff here. Lotions and sprays and books and things I don’t need anyway. When Nanteza got home, I gave them to her. As she hugged me, I was facing the dresser, and I noticed the poem I had put there hours before.
“Oh. I forgot. I wrote you a poem.”
She read it, laughing and crying. She thanked me a million times.
She was kneeling on the floor in front of me and I was sitting on the edge of my bed. Grabbing my hands, she started: “I love you so much. Thank you for…” Rebecca stopped and stared at the ceiling. “Every day I would come home…” She hung her head back to keep her tears in place—like when you are trying to catch your nosebleed. “How do I…Okay. You know how you feel on the days when Mackie is on?” (our favorite Spanish soap opera).

(I knew where she was going). “Yeah, I’m excited. All day.”
“Yeah.” (Wipes eyes, laughs nervously). “That is how I feel every day. Coming home and knowing that you are here. That you sleep in that bed, a few feet away from me.”

This girl. I love her so much, I’m going to miss her so much. I walk in our room hours later and she is still reading the poem, again and again. I am still numb. She sits in front of me and cries and I am numb because I am mixed. I want to hug my mom and hope she doesn’t let go for at least four minutes. I want to kiss my brother’s cheek, whose probably 3 times taller than he was when I left. And this is what I think about while I’m packing. I keep pushing Friday away, and I wonder if it is going to hit me.
But when I think that there is no Mom or Charlie for them to look forward to…that they have no mixed feelings, that in two days they will have nothing but an empty bed, an empty chair at the dinner table, that’s when things get blurry from full, wet eyes. They won’t get another student for four more months—and what then? How it must tax them…people regularly coming in and out of their lives. Gosh.

I wrote them all letters yesterday while in class. Brooke was talking about fair trade and missions, and I was telling Mom via letter that I don’t feel full Steadman anymore. And how crazy that is…that these are not just some people I met and lived with and loved for four months. A major part of me is Serukenya now. I have two families, two moms, two sisters. Which is my claim to Rebecca when she says I won’t come back to her. Just as I need to return to my family in Ohio, once I am there, given enough time, I will have to return to Mom and Nanteza and Aida and Irene and Suzan and Hannington. It’s something I didn’t expect, something I still can’t fully grasp. But something I praise, and stand in awe of, God for. He is so beautiful, and His heart is so full.

Switching subjects.

Two days ago. Two days ago I think most of us watching the news wished we were in a country that still thinks it’s morbid to show corpses. Or “not so” corpses anymore. Ashes, ashes, and twenty heaps that looked like charred rib cages. Baby rib cages.

A bit outside of Kampala is a primary and secondary boarding school for excelling students. (My cousin Daniel—remember his send-off party—goes to the secondary school). Well, in the primary school, one of the girl’s dormitories burnt down in the night. “Was burnt down” places the blame on no one, but someone had to be to blame. The girls were locked in, the guards were mysteriously missing, and the single guard at the main gate refused to let anyone in. How. In. the. World. Can you stand at a locked gate with a burning building FULL OF CHILDREN behind you, and refuse to let anyone in, unless you were paid off? And where the hell is the fire brigade or the police? Such systems, or lack thereof, kill me. Kill kids, rather. Twenty “bodies”, twenty mourning families, and even moms of twins now without two daughters, gosh. It makes me so sick.

What also makes me sick is that if I were at home, in the US, the ocean would be big enough. I would think, “Gosh, that sucks,” and I would maybe think of it three times that day, in minute, depressed spurts. Depressed in the loosest sense.
But when tragedy is only kilometers away, when my cousin is at the neighboring school, when this is the elementary school my mom went to, it’s all so real. But just as real as it would have been had I been at home.
Circumstances stay open and unchanged. It’s our minds, our eyes, that don’t.

It's things like this that have me crane my neck toward the bright night clouds and thank God like crazy that I'm still breathing, that my family's still breathing, that my friends are still breathing. Until it's our turn.

Again switching subjects out of necessity/for the sake of sanity:

The sleepover went well. Very well. We had a ball, and Rebecca finally taught me Sudoku.
Becca—American Becca—had to use the latrine, so I escorted her there. I waited for her outside, and we talked. That’s when Mom came walking through the compound: “Are you having an overnight in the toilet?”
She asked why we were talking.
“Mom, why? Is it inappropriate?” (We’ve been wondering this, as, on campus, we carry on conversations stalls next to each other. Culturally okay or not?)
“Yes, it’s inappropriate. So so much.” Her voice got high and she was laughing at us.
I told her how we’ve wondered this on campus.
“But no. With toilets it is okay. But in the pit latrine? Do not open your mouth. You might catch a fly.”
(By the way, I’ll never again have a problem with portapotties. This I know. They are luxurious by comparison).

Another of Mom’s great lines that night:

We were watching a new soap opera, and this one Spanish man was pretty dang ticked at his daughter and the boy who got her pregnant. When I say dang ticked I mean his face was making movements I’ve never really seen before. Maybe because the shows are dubbed over…but his mouth was going crazy.
Mom: “Oh my! He’s going to eat them!”
Hah.

She had also told Becca that they have been trying to feed us so much so that we'll look like Bwindi. Bwindi mountain gorillas.

I forgot to mention, awhile back when I preached, that Mom came home talking about it. “Margaret told me you preached and preached so well.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I told her, ‘That’s my girl.’”
One of my favorite conversations with her.

Suzan—campus Suzan—met Rebecca this week. It was so wonderful to have the two of them meet. When they did, Rebecca hugged Suzan upon first meeting her and said, “Hello colormate.” Hah.
American Becca said, “Colormate. Like the pens?” Hah again.

Rebecca had met me at school so she could use my internet. We then went for smoothies. The walk home was the best part: Suzan, Erin, Becca, Rebecca, and I. We wanted to know their Luganda and English words for the different sorts of “gassing.” Which makes for interesting conversation, let me tell you. It lasted the majority of the twenty minutes and brought about the sort of laughter where you stop in the middle of the red dirt hoad, hold your knees, and are basically screaming, trying to catch breath. I don’t even remember what was so funny…Wait! I just asked Erin and she remembers:

Suzan, with her mouth, was imitating the different types of gassing (I feel like a 7 year old, totally embarrassed, typing this all out). She said, “This one is the escort,” and she made a machine gun, a subtle machine gun, noise. “And this the silencer, and this the atom bomb.”
But the part that made us scream: Rebecca was explaining to us that there’s really nothing you can do. It is natural and you can’t hold it in.
Suzan protested. “Unless you use super glue.”

(By the by, Friday night we are staying on campus, to leave early the next morning for Rwanda. I was placed in the same dorm as Vicky, Suzan, and Franka. Our last night together. God. is. good).

The plan for the next few days: Today I have lunch with my Sunday School supervisor; she sent me a text message saying she loves me, and I am invited to her home. So sweet.
Tonight is the farewell dinner. All 36 of us, each with a family (the non-missions students lived with families for 2 weeks early in the semester), and families of 10 or more. Crazy amounts of people. Tonight I will also give them all the gifts I brought for them.
(Last night Mom gave me a beautiful velvet black scroll with a blessing on it. So sweet, again).
Friday V-Money picks me up from my house at 4. I will have a final afternoon and lunch with my family.
And Saturday is Rwanda for 10 or so days.

I want to end the semester’s recordings by saying “Sign here.” (Rebecca’s way of saying “Told ya,” or "Way to go," accompanied by a high five). Because 5 or so of our group got in a matatu accident the other night. No one’s hurt, except for a bruise or something. But there was broken glass.

This will be my last blog. (Saturday we leave for Rwanda, and after that is home sweet home). Thanks so much for reading and for caring about these people almost as much as I have. I feel like I’ve been able to share the feelings, and it’s a good, solid feeling. So, thanks. (If you think of it, we're openly welcoming prayers for safety home. Thanks). :)
I imagine much of my May will be pretty bored, and so I will be posting as many pictures as time allows—to make up for the sour internet and picture-loading abilities here. So, look out for that if you want, but if not: thanks again, and God’s speed.

Webale okusima.

Sign here.