When Your Trash Can is Filled with Maggots

When you take the lid off your trash can and it’s a swimming carpet of tiny, white maggots, you know one thing is for certain: THEY ARE GOING TO GET ON YOU. It doesn’t matter how careful you are, how far you hold that can away from your body with only two disdainful fingers and an upturned nose…they are coming for you.

Sure, you can try it. Go ahead. Sit on your front porch just staring at them writhing while you rest your head in your hands and sigh. Pout. Close your eyes and imagine a friendly neighbor ambling by, wanting nothing more than to clean your trash can for you. Picture an aimless youth anxiously looking for a service project. He suddenly looks up and POW! There you and your maggots are, just waiting to be served. Enjoy your daydreams. But know that when your eyes open, they will still be there, nature’s dreaded, undulating, albino decomposers.

Tempted to argue? I understand the urge. But rest assured that the maggots will not listen to your well-formed logic as to why they should leave. “Sure,” they think, “it’s nice outside, but this green plastic is just so TEMPTING.” And no, adopting the nasally voice of a five year old and repeatedly whining, “But I don’t waaaaant to clean up maggots” will not change the reality of what you must do. It just won’t.

In the end, the tantrums finally give way to a reluctant acceptance of what must be, and you will arm yourself with gloves and bleach and a jerry can full of water. You will put on a brave face. You are a PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER. You are a SURVIVOR. You can handle ANYTHING. You are NOT DISGUSTED BY MAGGOTS. And when the water from your assault splashes and with it hundreds of maggots hit the top of your exposed, bare foot, you will pretend that it’s okay. Yes, you’ll squeal. And yes, you’ll brush them off with speed and ferocity you didn’t know you were capable of. But you’ll clean that darn trash can until it sparkles. Did they come for you? Ohhhh, yes. They came. They came in full force. They gave it all they had. But in the end the score is Steph:1, Maggots: dead.

 

 

 

 

Shake It Off

A lot has been written about waiting. We wait to become the perfect version of ourselves. To find true love. To get our dream job. For something, anything to happen.

A lot of waiting happens in the Peace Corps, too. It begins with a lengthy application process and upwards of a year or more of waiting to be accepted. Then we wait for the myriad test results to come back from the doctor, giving us a clean bill of health to travel overseas. We wait for background checks and visas, passport photos and vaccination appointments. But all of this waiting is nothing compared to the waiting when the plane touches down, at last, in your country of service.

Things are great, but things are terrible (you see, all grand adventures have at least a pinch of both). Sure, you’re sharing a room with five other people and there’s no water to be found and volunteers are dropping left and right from dysentery and giardia, but just wait! It will be over soon. And yes, you haven’t slept well in days and there are cockroaches climbing all over your clothes and you’re sweating like a fat man in a sauna, but just wait! Training will end. You’ll get your own place. Things will get better.

And things do, my friend, get better. They get much, much better. Your grand adventure becomes less and less about surviving and more and more about thriving. You snuggle right into your new, happy life and find great comfort and joy in it. But still, even then, the waiting continues. This is because waiting isn’t tied to misery or contentment. Waiting just is.

Everyone experiences waiting every single day. But waiting in Uganda becomes an art form. You wait hours for a taxi to fill while your much-too-heavy backpack presses into your lap and your knees press into the metal bar in front of you. You wait for lengthy faculty meetings held in 90% local language to end. You wait for 6 hours for your first cake to bake on the sigiri. You wait 10 months for your house to be wired for electricity. You wait, anxiously, for your paycheck to FINALLY COME. You wait, and wait, and wait.

But contrary to what you’re probably thinking, all of this waiting is not a bad thing. In fact, I will argue that it’s one of the best things I’ve done in country. Let’s take a detour, shall we?

I recently came to the U.S. for a visit. On the way to the U.S. I experienced, in chronological order: 1) a 4 hour delay at the airport, 2) a 7 hour flight, 3) a 3 hour layover, 4) a two hour delay, 5) an additional two hour delay on the airplane and without air conditioning, 6) being deplaned, 7) a two hour wait in a line to get a voucher to stay overnight. This was all before I finally got on a plane that worked and had another 8 hour flight, 5 hour layover, plus another 6 hour flight. Can I get a what, what?!

Ah, but this isn’t all! On the way back from the U.S. to Uganda I experienced, in chronological order: 1) a 6 hour flight, 2) a 5 hour layover, 3) a 2 hour delay on the airplane while someone was arrested for bringing a knife on board followed by 4) another 3 hour delay due to a mechanical malfunction, 5) being deplaned, 6) a 1 hour wait in line to get a voucher to stay overnight, 7) an 8 hour wait after being kicked out of the hotel and before the flight left, 8) an 8 hour flight, 9) a 1 hour layover, 10) a 6 hour flight, 11) a 1 hour layover, 12) a 1 hour delay to get someone in a stretcher on board, 13) a 2 hour flight, and 14) luggage lost for days.

Now, if you stuck with me through those lists upon lists of tragically comic delays or maybe even tried to do the math, you discovered that waiting I did. Boy, oh boy did I wait! But here’s the thing…I DIDN’T GET ANGRY. I’m not lying to you. Unlike the Spanish woman who got hauled off by the police for angrily and repeatedly yelling at the flight attendants, unlike the hundreds of people sighing loudly and arguing with veritable steam coming out of their reddened ears, I didn’t get mad. Instead, I simply waited.

At one point, when the masses on the return flight home were their closest to grabbing pitchforks and storming the castle, I stood in the aisle, turned up my music, and danced. Literally. I smiled and danced to none other than Ms. Swift. “But the people gonna yell, yell, yell, yell, yell and the babies gonna cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, but I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, baby. Shake it off! Shake, shake it off!” I sang in my head. (Don’t judge. You know you secretly love that song.)

And that, my friends, is the beauty of knowing how to wait. The art of accepting what is, regardless of what you want. The art of acting instead of reacting. The glorious art of waiting.

I can feel this art slowly transferring to the other areas of my life too, the ones that really matter. None of us can escape the really hard kind of waiting. I know people who are waiting to finally feel at home somewhere or with someone. People who are waiting to get pregnant after years of trying. People who are waiting to heal after experiencing life-changing grief. People who are waiting for sick loved ones to get better. People who are waiting for themselves to be ready to change, to move, to grow. I’m waiting too…for lots of things. Lucky for me, I’ve got Ugandan-strength waiting power running through my veins. I have “acceptance of what is” stamped on my soul. So I’m just gonna wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, baby. (And when the frustrations and impatience creep up…) Shake them off! Shake, shake them off!

 

 

Would You Rather

You’ve all played the game “Would You Rather,” right? It typically goes something like, “Would you rather use sandpaper as toilet paper OR use hot sauce as eye drops?” and you choose between two ridiculously horrible options. It’s a stupid game, but one I played some version of a lot when I visited the states last month for my brother’s wedding. My version of the game was mostly in my head and went something like this: “Would you rather be at home with the people you love OR be alone in Uganda doing what you feel like you need to be doing?” It’s a tough question. Living here and doing this work is one of those decisions, like all really important decisions, that you don’t just make once. You make it again and again.

Everything, absolutely everything about being home was shocking at first. The quiet streets. The overwhelming number of choices of delicious things to eat. The scenery that looked so brown and broad. But most shocking of all were my encounters with family and friends. I expected to be peppered with questions. “Hold on just a minute,” I imagined myself saying to the crowd of people vying for my attention, “she asked me first, you’ll get your turn in a minute.” The reality was that I heard the question, “So, is the Ebola outbreak near you?” about 10,000 times and that’s about it. (The answer, if you’re wondering, is no.) With very few exceptions, people just didn’t really ask about my life. It was strange, my friends, strange indeed.

The whole thing got me thinking about that gulf that inevitably grows between people when miles or years separate them. You run into an old high school friend and ask each other inane things about what you do for a living and where you are living now, and, truth be told, neither of you really care about the answers. That’s not to say that you don’t care about THEM, but where do you even begin? How do you ask the questions that matter to someone you haven’t spoken to in years? The whole thing feels forced, because, well, it IS forced, so oftentimes it’s easier to say nothing, to just duck behind the grocery store display and wait for him to pass.

The trouble with doing something like serving in the Peace Corps is that you NEED to talk about it. Desperately. It’s this monumentally huge life change. And all of us, even the quiet ones, need to talk about the big stuff. The stuff that alters the way we look at the world and the way we look at ourselves. And questions about Ebola, while topical, just aren’t going to cut it.

So, what’s to be done about this? I have no idea, but for me, this blog is a good place to start. I get to feel a little bit heard, even though no one may be listening. It’s kind of like yelling into a canyon. Even if no one is there to hear you, you hear your echo and it’s kind of comforting.

In the end, I decided again (as I knew I would) to come back to Uganda. Surprisingly, it genuinely feels like home here. I mean sure, the minute I set foot on Ugandan soil I turn into Charlie Brown’s friend Pig-Pen. But when given a choice of “Would you rather feel understood by others or better understand yourself?” I choose the latter.

Steph in Uganda

Steph in the U.S.

A Fair to Remember

My family has a long standing tradition of going to the state fair every fall, where we gawk at the giant pumpkins and the giant pigs and we eat giant Navajo tacos and giant funnel cakes covered in powdered sugar. I love the fair, so I jumped at the chance to visit the Jinja Agriculture and Trade Show this weekend.

I’ve never seen nylons for sale here in Uganda, but they were one of the many things being peddled on the streets lining the path to the fair. The big, twisted piles of beige sat on a small tarp next to lollipops on one side and winter hats on the other. I’ve also never seen people forming a line in Uganda, but there was one at the fair! A man wearing thick, black winter gloves and carrying a giant stick helped prod people into the queue and move women to one side and men to the other to be searched before entering.

The place was packed, and the first greeting we got upon entering was a man saying, “I want to paint your kids.” I love it here.

The fair had things for sale, but instead of hot tubs and ugly jewelry, it sold fertilizer and ugly jewelry. Instead of prize winning squash and brownies being displayed on small foam trays, blue ribbons attached, they had sugar cane plants and tomatoes on the vine and a ground nuts still in the ground.

I wasn’t expecting to see cows and goats and chickens, since I see them every day in every village in Uganda, but they were there…at least a few of them. Prisoners wearing bright yellow t-shirts and bright yellow shorts with thin, black, vertical lines on them stood in the pig pens and poked at pigs with sticks. (I really hope they were in only imprisoned for loitering, a common cause of arrest here.)

They even had carnival games! People threw blue rings at sodas, money attached to blocks of wood, or small packages of crackers, trying to win them.

The rides were limited to swings of different sizes and something kind of like a carousel, with crudely painted, squat wooden horses in black, white, or yellow. The children all sat gripping their horses in utter terror. It was hilarious. I nearly did the same on the swings when I glanced over and saw a tangled web of exposed wires, some leading toward a big tub of water.

Everything was so...uniquely Uganda that I couldn’t stop smiling, though the heat was oppressive and the crowds were massive. I cursed myself for not bringing a camera or a notepad. Desperate to remember the details of the place, I scribbled notes on the only thing I could find—the back of a band aid wrapper.

Most days these days, I love this place. I’m proud to live in a place that doesn’t feel the need to instruct you not to stand up while you’re riding the swings, or require health permits to feed you fried donuts. I like walking up the stairs to a ride and wondering if the boards are going to break or if I’m going to fall through the wide openings in between the slats. I love that a man here can wear overalls with a pink elephant on the center pocket and elastic at the ankles. I love that they inexplicably sell wool sweaters in 90 degree heat. I like seeing exposed wires and wondering just how much jerry rigging was needed to get that ride up and running. I love those ridiculous piles of nylons. Everything about this place is just seeping with character. So I scribble notes on a band aid wrapper and I watch the enormous marabou storks circle overhead and I pray I’ll remember.

 

Transformers

Do you remember the Transformers movies? How about the old Transformers TV show? Me neither, really. I do remember the catchy slogan, “Transformers, more than meets the eye,” in that odd robotic voice, and I know that there are these flashy looking cars just driving around town when BAM! Before you know it, they’ve turned into big alien robot thingies.

I attended a Partnership for Youth Empowerment workshop this week that was all about human transformers. Well, okay, it was more like transformations inside of humans. The basic premise was this: if you really want to help people, train people, teach people, they need to experience an internal change. In addition to teaching us how to help people get to the point where they are willing to shift internally, we experienced a change ourselves.

My transformation was a big one. Through a series of activities, conversations, and buckets of tears, I burrowed my way down to a big, fat, ugly belief about myself that I’ve been walking around with for…forever. I’m no stranger to this process. I’ve gone digging for other ugly bits before. I know how to painstakingly extract them, look them in the eye, and bid them adieu. But it was still hard. Exhausting. It’s like the transformer car is all rusty and its metal frame is bent and it’s been a car for so long it’s forgotten it can be anything else at all. Still, I uncovered it. I held it up to the light. I examined it and knew that it didn’t serve me. That it had never served me (unlike some ugly bits that serve as protective little soldiers). And I knew that I needed to let it go. When the time came, however, I clung to it like a life raft.

If you have yet to go on this adventure of mining for the things that are holding you back (perhaps because you still think they are “you”), let me tell you something. No matter how putrid, how distorted, how dark the thing you’ve found is, you want to keep it. You want to curl up with it in bed and stroke it and hold it forever and ever. Why? Because it’s all you know. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. And the thought of letting it go is terrifying. Who are you without it? If it goes, is there even anything left there at all? Scary stuff, this letting go business.

In the end, I did choose to let it go. I’m so happy that I did. I’m one step closer to being the best version of myself. But today, I want to talk about that transformation process. You see, a light bulb came on for me this week.

I was at dinner with Americans and Ugandans, discussing our workshop and our lives when one man said something that really struck me. We were talking about the caning of children in schools here, and he said, “Regardless of where it came from, it is our culture now. Letting it go would be like a death. We don’t know who we are without it.” And I got it. For the first time, I really got it. Peace Corps volunteers are not here presenting new ideas to people who are unwilling to change. We are here inviting them to let go of the only thing they know, the only thing they have ever known. And yes, a lot of what we’re asking them to give up is ugly. It’s not serving them. But it’s them, or it’s been with them for so long that it feels like them. And what will they have and who will they be without it?

When the problem is framed in this way, I think, “Who am I to judge them for not wanting to change? Who am I to criticize them for the pace at which they are willing to let go?” And my view of my role, suddenly, has changed. I’m here attempting to help people make an inner transformation. First, I need to help them feel safe enough to really look at the things they’ve always done. To hold them up to the light and see them as they are. Then my job is simply to invite them to let go, one small bit at a time, and let them choose when or if they do so. It’s a slow process. Very slow. And each person’s transformation will look different and be different. Inner transformation cannot be measured in the number of libraries built or workshops held or test scores improved. Inner transformation may not show at all at first. And, you know, I’m okay with that.

I get to work and live and be in this beautiful green Eden, with beautiful, kind people. I get to make offers of change to myself and to others. I get to slowly transform into the person I want to be. It is enough.

PYE & In Movement Workshop Participants