full circle

circa 2007- leaving Rwanda

I feel like things are sinking in.  Things that I've known for a long time, but have just started believing.  Does that make sense? It wouldn't have to me before a month or two ago.  Then, the sinking began. Certain things clicked and I realized, in some relieving ways, who I am.  Or, maybe I just remembered?  I don't know.  I do know I feel compelled and calmer at the same time.  I love it.

I've been letting my commute be quiet and I feel like I've been working on my soul.  Doing some Spring cleaning, if you will.

I think it all kicked off via a conversation with a college student who just returned from studying abroad in Uganda- the same program I returned from five years ago.  As I asked her questions, I heard my younger self responding different answers than I would today.  It was if I was back there, looking into the future and not liking everything I saw.  So, younger Kimberly- I think she's more a Kimi than a Kimberly, really- spoke up and even kicked me in the shins a little.  Not a mean kick; more of a get-off-your-butt-on-your-beliefs kick.

I'm so grateful that I have family who loves me, a Jake who loves me, and even pets who love me, even with my very rusty soul.  I'm not a nice person sometimes, and I'm a hypocrite a lot of the time.  But, like I said, I'm cleaning out.  I'm trying to let cars cut me off and not get annoyed.  Its not worth it.  I want my life to be rich with family and joy, not riddled with frustration and stress and time spent alone.

I want to play my guitar more. And by more, I mean at all.

I changed my strings tonight.  I had to.  They were so out of shape that I broke one in a futile attempt to tune 'em.  Do you know the last time they were changed? A little over five years ago. In Uganda.

FULL CIRCLE, PEOPLE. I'M COMING BACK AROUND TO WHO I WANT TO BE.

I don't have to be in East Africa to be fully who I'm called to be.  Thank God.

Its sinking in.  

through-lines

Two good friends- who happen to be my co-workers- resigned in the last week. During the second "I'm-resigning" conversation, my friend expressed regret. She was apologetic and obviously struggling more with the guilt of leaving me, than the actual decision of staying or going. Suddenly I heard myself saying what I needed to hear myself: "Since I started this job I've wondered when it would be time to leave. That time hasn't come for me yet. I still feel called to this work and called to be present here. But if you don't, you need to move on, and I'm okay with staying until I feel called to do otherwise." It wasn't until I heard myself saying these words that I remembered them myself. As soon as they slipped out of my mouth I let go some of the resentment I had allowed to creep in over the past week. I stomped down on the pity party that was huddling behind my eyes and found the truth underneath my superficial pride. And I remembered something I wrote over 4 years ago:

"...how long I will stay or go? Will I do good or just be present? I stay right now because is the truest form of faithfulness available. If staying in six months is still the only blatant way to live what seems ought to come next, I hope I have the courage to do so. If flying off somewhere, whether it be Chicago or the Lybian Desert or Phnom Penh, I hope the same. I don't know if I believe in moments of epiphany or promise for changing the world any more. I do believe in following opportunities to give of myself- here and far, and wherever I end up. I desire to give of myself. Faithfully."

I want to have the courage to stay, if that is what I'm called to. I want to be sensitive to where and how I can give of myself, and I just want to keep giving. It seems like so much has changed in the last 4ish years (and it has!). Still, its encouraging to have a peak at certain through-lines.

Happy Friday, friends. May we have confidence in our through-lines- those things that are deeply rooted and guiding us, even when we forget them. 

a thinking, contributing member of society

I had a hilarious experience last weekend. I had just performed Mzungu Memoirs, my one-woman show about how a cross-cultural experience can affect one's perspective on one's own culture and worldview. It's a memoir about my semester abroad in Uganda and Rwanda and in it I ask questions of injustice and discuss the realities of genocide, while also laughing through the inevitably ridiculous details of cross-cultural misunderstandings. Needless to say, it is a rather reflective piece. It's a memoir for goodness sake.

So, I was stunned when an audience member raised her hand during the Q&A and said something to the extent of "was is weird to be in East Africa, as a theatre person, and have to, like, think about things? To have to, like, think seriously?"

Huh?

I immediately realized that it didn't matter what I performed to this audience member. It didn't matter if it was about Descartes or if I tap-danced to 1950s musical numbers. She heard "theatre" and assumed I was a non-thinking fluff.

Of course I didn't miss the chance to unleash a mini-lecture of how theatre is used- every day, all over the world- as a tool to fight human rights abuses. She got an overly smiley response about the role of theatre in Rwanda post-genocide and Uganda post-colonization. She heard about how theatre fought apartheid in South Africa and dictatorships in South America. The sad thing is, I don't know if she believed me. She still had the same tilt-of-her-head confusion at the concept of me as simultaneously a "theatre person" and a thinking, contributing member of society.

We're not all tap-dancing, jazz hands waving, lunatics! I swear! I may have pajama pants that say DRAMA QUEEN on them, but they are mostly facetious.

PS: Speaking of human rights- a professor showed this in class on Wednesday night and I loved it:

fire and creativity



sing. dance. love. east-africa style.

A couple days ago I reflected back into my time abroad. Tonight I started to read some of my 2007 blog posts that eventually created mzungu memoirs. That blog reads like a different person. I like that woman's writing style. Her fire and creativity. Her desperate search for truth. Her attempt to figure out where her "deep passion and the world's deep hunger meet" (Buechner). 

A conversation over dinner prompted the husband and I to delve into my ol' blog from days of yore. He wasn't in my life in those days, and he's still getting to know that version of myself. The blog post that wiggled it's way into our dinner? About America's role abroad, of course. Its a topic that still fills me with boomerang-style questions- questions you ask, that inevitably land right back in your own hands. 

I love re-reading the comments on that blog. Words from my mom, my brother and sister, friends and church family- their support made evident through their commitment to me across timezones. They continue to be people who love and support me. My mom and sister still read my writing, no matter how pigheaded or silly. And even now, I'm asking so many of the same questions.

That's what I'm committed to- asking. I still want to be a woman full of fire and creativity, searching for truth. Its just so easy to get caught up in life, isn't it?

a former self

Its seems a lifetime ago, but its only been four years. Sheesh. Just four years ago I was in Rwanda and about to start a semester at a Ugandan university. If I could alter and add to what the labels at the top of the right column say, I realize now that I would write in big RWANDA and UGANDA ones. Then I remember that those are just labels from past blog posts, and not of my LIFE. Right, right...blog world isn't my all-encompassing. I like my little blog so much that I forget there are these gaps.


leaving Rwanda

Four years ago I spent four months in East Africa. I returned to the States and met the inevitable and painful question "so, how was it?" to which I would respond, "great. it changed my life and all that." Sarcastic, but honest. About as honest as I could be for a while. I came back from abroad with one college semester left, and I used it to begin the process of, well, processing. I wrote a memoir piece called mzungu memoirs and performed it as my senior thesis.

Every time I perform the show its different. The first time, I felt as if I was taking my first deep breath since returning to the States. It was the first time I didn't feel lonely since returning. Then I performed it again 6 months later, and again a few months after that. I've been blessed with opportunities to perform it a couple times a year, and each time a little more life has happened between me and my East African self. I performed it last Friday, and was confronted with this big deal of life that's happened between me and Uganda- a wedding, a honeymoon and a name change. A whole new identity to add to the mix.

I talk about identity in the show- the value of names. One of my Ugandan home-stay families named me Nassali, after the "clever-est woman in the Chima clan." My peers at Uganda Christian University called me "Keeem-bear-leee" with their strong Luganadan accents. I would hear "Kimi" called through phone lines from Connecticut. And I wondered if a different self was called out of me with every name that resounded in my direction. Now I've added another name- wife- and it was dizzying in the preparation for Friday's performance. More than ever, it felt like I was playing a former self. Getting reacquainted and relearning my own language. 



the path I walked into Banda to work in the IDP camp

 And what an incredible opportunity performing this show is. I was forced, despite my own reluctance, to re-access this vulnerable former self and this incredible abroad experience. I didn't just get reacquainted with Nassali. I was forced to remember my home-stay families, my niece Mercy (who is now 6 years old!), the people I worked with in the IDP camp, and my peers at UCU. The smells of the dining hall. The heaviness of Rwanda's memorial centers. The moment at one of those centers in which I received a bit of faith back again, after a dark period of questioning. My hut. Hand washing my clothes. Cold showers and dirt-orange feet. Matatu rides into Kampala. My birthday dinner at the Indian restaurant in Garden City. The children on the street yelling "mzungu," day after day.



dinner in UCU's dining hall, braids, matoke, and all

Friday night was emotionally exhausting, and fill-me-up enriching. And my husband was there with me, cueing the music and even fielding a q&a question or two. My former self and my current self are all darn lucky to have this fella in our life.