boy come home
Brace yourself. It's going to be one of those posts.
Out under these pretty twinkling stars we've all shared and lived under all these years, we've all been divided, too. We've been under the notion that our home is so different from everyone else's.
That's true. At home I'm sleeping on a fouton in a room with a TV, 3 computers (one laptop, one desktop, one old desktop-turned-crate), half a dozen movie posters, a faded red carpet, blue walls, air conditioning and heating, a drop cieling, two windows, a fireplace and several empty bottles of decent scotch. There are stacks of DVDs, books and a general collection of clutter representing a cross-section of my life in knick-knacks I can't bring myself to throw away or otherwise get rid of. My two big cats visit me, demanding attention as they see fit, while my mother lives the upstairs life watching tennis or golf when she isn't out actually playing tennis or golf. I have a car, a decent, well-paying, flexible job, and too many very good friends. This is home.
But now I feel at home sleeping in a room open to the air, where the power often cuts out for 12 or 24 hours at a time, where I need to pull down a mosquito net over top of me before I sleep, where there's a cool stone floor, white drapes that do nothing to keep out the early morning sunlight and are no barriers to sound whatsoever, leaving me at the mercy of a groundskeeper hellbent on sweeping up fallen leaves from 8 in the morning with the loudest rake ever used on this earth. The bathroom doors creaks so loudly that using it is guaranteed to wake the other person in the room, and the shower's supply of hot water seems to be determied in quantity and availability by the alignment of the planets. It's desperately different, and the world outside this room is even more removed from the place I've known as home for over 20 years. Red sand, Matatu's, Boda's, shillings, everywhere you hear 'mzungu', which means 'white person', and it weighs on me everyday that I stick out here like a sore thumb. I love it though. This is home.
Welcome to Canada.
Welcome to Uganda.
Welcome ...home.
The stars are still up there. I guess that's something likely to keep consistent.
careful where you stand, my love
careful where you lay your head
Out under these pretty twinkling stars we've all shared and lived under all these years, we've all been divided, too. We've been under the notion that our home is so different from everyone else's.
That's true. At home I'm sleeping on a fouton in a room with a TV, 3 computers (one laptop, one desktop, one old desktop-turned-crate), half a dozen movie posters, a faded red carpet, blue walls, air conditioning and heating, a drop cieling, two windows, a fireplace and several empty bottles of decent scotch. There are stacks of DVDs, books and a general collection of clutter representing a cross-section of my life in knick-knacks I can't bring myself to throw away or otherwise get rid of. My two big cats visit me, demanding attention as they see fit, while my mother lives the upstairs life watching tennis or golf when she isn't out actually playing tennis or golf. I have a car, a decent, well-paying, flexible job, and too many very good friends. This is home.
But now I feel at home sleeping in a room open to the air, where the power often cuts out for 12 or 24 hours at a time, where I need to pull down a mosquito net over top of me before I sleep, where there's a cool stone floor, white drapes that do nothing to keep out the early morning sunlight and are no barriers to sound whatsoever, leaving me at the mercy of a groundskeeper hellbent on sweeping up fallen leaves from 8 in the morning with the loudest rake ever used on this earth. The bathroom doors creaks so loudly that using it is guaranteed to wake the other person in the room, and the shower's supply of hot water seems to be determied in quantity and availability by the alignment of the planets. It's desperately different, and the world outside this room is even more removed from the place I've known as home for over 20 years. Red sand, Matatu's, Boda's, shillings, everywhere you hear 'mzungu', which means 'white person', and it weighs on me everyday that I stick out here like a sore thumb. I love it though. This is home.
Welcome to Canada.
Welcome to Uganda.
Welcome ...home.
The stars are still up there. I guess that's something likely to keep consistent.
careful where you stand, my love
careful where you lay your head