Arriving in the Dark

After much scrambling around town to finish last minute details and make last minute barters in preparation for the arrival of the student group from the US, the trip is underway. The Be The Change service group for this year, consisting of five high school students and three adults, arrived sometime past nine this evening to all of the many and unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells of Uganda. Arriving past dark is an odd entry to the country, since the anxiousness to see and experience the world around you is boiling over. Yet, all you can see are the lights of bodabodas weaving through traffic, the vague outlines of tables, people and produce at an open market, and glimpses through doorways of peoples homes or businesses as the car speeds along the highway from the Entebbe airport to the capitol of Kampala. Meanwhile, I sat facing them in the van, sputtering all of the random knowledge I had gleaned since my own similar arrival nearly two months ago, knowing that for now, most of it was going to fly over their jet lagged heads. It doesn't matter what anyone tells you anyway. You have to see it. Upon this sort of late night arrival, the surreal sense that you are in another country lingers uncertainly. Without actually seeing anything clearly, things remain vague and it is difficult to place yourself in the surroundings. The air smells different, feels different, and the people talk differently. For the first night, you are told not to drink the water and to use the mosquito net provided for you above your bed. However, nothing settles in until the light of the next day. It is a matter of seeing things for yourself - that's exactly what everyone in the group is here to do. So, until tomorrow, they remain in a sort of limbo, waiting to see Africa with their own eyes - to discover it for themselves. Then, the real journey begins.