So it is no mystery to the lot of you that I secretly ventured back to the United States for a 3 week stint—and I must assume that the majority of you saw my journey as a gluttonous week holiday from the dirt and grime of Uganda filled with pints after pints of microbrews and as much food as the heart could take (without submitting myself to cardiac arrest). Granted, I succumbed to the copious amounts of beer and non-diabetic nutrients America has to offer, but the reasons and the eventual facts-of-life held the true weight of my sudden escape from my current life…
Amidst the mayhem of Kampala; literally climbing atop the bumpers of matatus lined up outside the old-taxi park I safely was received by the nearest sidewalk, only to find that my phone, and its existence ended by the crushing rubber of one of these vehicles-of-death as they began to move through the muddy streets. Yes; my phone was crushed by a taxi…Hectically attempting to purchase a new phone and acquire my old phone number through the incredibly incompetent and lazy employees at the Zain Point in Iganga, I began to receive numerous text messages, many of them from the United States. Granny; the mother of my mother, had succumb to an ‘accident’ and was in the hospital and I was over 7500 miles away. Of course in making the decision to spend the next 2 years of my life in a distant country—putting myself in to having potentially devastatingly emotional breakdowns due to the difficulties in communication and the lack of those specific family and friends—I could never have imagined the feelings to have entered my mind and body as they did this day and the months to come.
I felt so alone; so distant from anyone who could comfort me from the pains I was feeling. I thought I had prepared myself for this. I had talked myself through this for months that there was a chance; a fairly good chance that something would happen to someone at home. None of that mattered in the end. I could not help either to imagine what all of my family at home were feeling, those who were there to see Granny; those to witness her looking to be some sort of extra-terrestrial science experiment with tubes and monitors surrounding her frail little body. Is it not strange how something that we know to be inevitable can pain us so much? Fortunately having Lisa by my side for so much of the time allowed me to vent, allowed me to be self-depreciating from time to time, but also permitted me to find a way out of these moments. Many times I felt so alone; unable to communicate even with those who I had come to trust and call my friends here. I felt scared, alone and had to find a way out of these feelings. Many of you who know me very well know that I tend to keep my thoughts to myself, I like to keep myself and my plans hidden away often even hidden from myself. This was very much the case with my plans to return home. Thanks to the support of Lisa here in Uganda and the efforts of Sarah in the US to look online for the best way for me to get back to the US the schemes were in motion for my return to US soil. The next person to come in to the picture was my brother; who would be the last to know of my trip home until my landing in the Minneapolis International Airport. If I had myself attempted to purchase the tickets; my parents would have seen a large purchase, and my cover would have been blown, therefore my brother was the best solution to allow things to be kept quiet. Why did I want to keep my coming quiet you might ask? Especially when the route of this sudden trip home was to chase a last-ditch effort to see Granny before the inevitable? For purely selfish reasons; I wanted my time to be my time. I wanted to do with it what I deemed necessary for myself to cope with the stresses that I deal with here and all the stresses that I had dealt with since hearing of Granny’s accident. If my journey had been made known prior I would have dealt with an extensive amount of planning minute to minute the events that would take fold over the 3 week period. I would have pushed more stress on to my already frantic self and knew that to come home I would need to first and foremost make it a selfish venture…I wanted to see Granny, I felt that something would have been missing in my life and would have regretted it had I not come back. At this point nobody else mattered and having made the trip already I would not have changed at all how it had been done.
Amazingly I was graced by many kind souls on my nearly 36 hours of traveling back to Portland…
Sitting between and aid worker from the UK and a grad-student from Zimbabwe on her way to volunteer in the UK for 6 months, I had the comfort of 2 complete strangers, to talk to and learn about different perspectives on our lives and to suddenly feel alive again, able to communicate with someone other than my own inner dialogue.
The waitress at the bar in Heathrow airport in London might have thought I was crazy, but to me she was such a comfort. Sitting idly at a table with a limited number of pounds to my name, I saw a quaint little couple on the end of their honeymoon walk to their table each holding a large glass of water. I was confused, for the life of me I could not recollect if water was free, or if it was safe to drink, or how to even approach receiving such a life-saving liquid. I had grown so accustomed to boiling water or treating it chemically or buying expensive bottled water that I could not accurately comprehend whether or not the water could be free. I slowly approached the bar and asked hesitantly if water was free or not. The waitress kind of snickered and assured me that it was free and even stepped up to the plate by offering me a cute little lemon wedge in this cool glass of goodness. I sauntered to my table, carefully carrying this first sense of reverse-culture shock and began to tear up, as I couldn’t help but to feel that I had forgotten how things work at home.
And nothing could have prepared me for this last woman, and I wish that I could somehow express to her how much this meant to me at this time. Maybe one day she will come across this page, in all likelihood she has completely forgotten about me, but this was just amazing. As I wandered through the Minneapolis International Airport, having just spent nearly 30 hours of flying from Uganda to Kenya, then Kenya to London/Heathrow and London/Heathrow to Minneapolis, I found myself without any money at all. The few Ugandan Shillings I had could not be exchanged, and I was remaining with only a few pence from London, therefore I figured I was left to pace the terminals for the next 4 hours before I took off, and still no one knew that I was coming back to Portland except for my brother who I could not even call because I had no money. Glossy-eyed and overwhelmed by the extravagant airport storefronts and restaurants, I found a set of payphones, which I figured this is the time that I should call Anna and let her know that I was coming home, and would be arriving in nearly 7 hours. Reading the instructions on the phone it said that long distance calls were 25 cents a minute. After carefully approaching a gentleman, telling him of my plight and needing to make a phone call, he granted me my wish of on quarter. I attempted the call and soon found that there was a $1.00 minimum, so I was SOL and couldn’t get myself to go around and find 3 more quarters to make this call. Feeling defeated and having this lone quarter in my pocket, I found a woman sitting on a bench quietly and something came to me that this was the woman who would help me. I approached her softly, describing my situation having just come from Uganda, having no money, and the only thing that I needed to do was make one phone call to my sister to tell her so that she could pick me up in Portland. For much of the past few months I had been stupidly planning to arrive in Portland at 11.30pm without anyone knowing, make my way to a Denny’s on public transport, and wait for daylight to walk to my parents’ house. At this point I knew I wanted someone to be there to find me. The woman at the Minneapolis Airport looked at me as if I was crazy, and claimed to me that her phone battery was dead. I said to her ‘Miss, but as you have your phone plugged in to the wall to charge it is possible to make a call at the same time’ and at this point I think somewhere in her she took me as not being some devious young craftsman but just desperate to finally break the silence, and tell someone that I was coming home. Not knowing that she had blocked her number as I pulled out my phone from Uganda and read her my sister’s phone number to call her, she handed me the phone and fortunately my sister did indeed pick up this (unknown number)! Thinking that I was simply playing some game, my sister did not believe that I was actually in the Minneapolis Airport but soon she came to her own senses. As I did not want to infringe on this woman’s generosity to allow me to use her phone, I made the conversation as quick as possible, and as looking up could see this woman having one of the most genuine, sincere smiles on her face, finally knowing for sure that she had helped me in such an uncanny way and that I was by no means going to run off with her phone. As I finished talking to Anna, the woman offered me her phone to call anyone else I wanted to call, but having overcome the stress and pressure of having held in this little secret for nearly 2 months, I was so relieved that I just wanted to then again, but happily have my piece of mind and not break in to conversation with others. Then the woman, out of the blue asked if I had any money, and saying know she immediately pulled out her purse and gave me more than enough money to purchase a hamburger dinner and a drink at the airport while also apologizing that was all that she had. I could not believe what had just happened, how sweet this woman had been and to have been so generous. I couldn’t help myself, but I immediately reached in to my bag to give the only material item I had, the only thing I could think of, but a paper bead necklace from Uganda, which she eventually accepted, and giving her a hug walked away feeling so much better about this world that I had just flown back in to.
The rest is history; history to be told at a later time. I made my way to Portland, friends and family surprised as ever heard of my being there and I was able to spend time and talk of all of our stories. More importantly I was able to be there for Granny; and even more so for myself. I spent weeks with her, seeing her trying albeit struggling to regain all that she had lost. Everything she had created though was right in front of her. All of her family coming, giving there all to help her get stronger, even though we all knew eventually our efforts would be defeat by some Greater Force. From her bed with all the tubes and monitors she made her way to taking steps, making jokes asking questions and showed an eagerness to pull through to the next day, but something else was calling her. You could tell she was tired, you could tell her body was tired, you could tell that it could be any day. I left America, back to Uganda, where my life was waiting, where so much in me had changed on May 27th. By June 10th Granny was away from the confines of hospitals and elderly homes. She was removed from the hands of a world determined to prolong life whether or not it could be considered a happy life. Granny was back at 1023, in Portland, an address coincidentally identical to her birthday of October 23rd. The home that I grew up in for 18 years and the home that my parents have lived in for 30 and now Granny’s place to call home before she left us. In the wee hours of June 13th, Granny left us to that Greater Force. She left it at home, with her family and love all around her. I so wished that I could have been there; but had I not gone to her before I could not have had her look at me and recognize me, to talk to me to hear her tell me that she loved me, and I could not tell her the same in this capacity. Had I not gone back I would have regretted my entire decision to have come, I would have felt a constant pain and pressure in me, that I do not know if there would have been any remedy for.
I love you Granny…
The picture above is a picture from Uganda. The afternoon of June 13th, shortly after I was informed of Granny’s passing, I placed this flower in to the waters of the Sipi River in remembrance of Granny…
