From Home

I am back to being a graduate student again. Today that entailed a prolonged discussion about language (precisely the stuff that we get great pleasure out of referring to as mental masturbation – oh, the joys of pleasure for pleasure’s sake/knowledge for knowledge’s sake). As I sat in the classroom I listened to myself commenting on the use of language to express more than the meaning captured in words and expressions; language as our way of claiming (or not claiming) a place in the world. I referenced Uganda – specifically, the countless times I swallowed words, sat in silence or was spoken over by a man who inevitably managed to use an excess of words to say a dearth of anything yet commandeer all the physical, intellectual and social space. Suddenly I felt a familiar, briefly forgotten, yet always overwhelming surge of frustration and anger swell within me.

I’ve been back from Uganda for nearly four months. More often than not the six months I spent there seem like a distant, surreal memory. Part of that is obviously natural; with time everything fades. However the larger part can best be described as deliberate denial. It’s reached the point where I have dozens of unopened emails in my inbox – all from friends, acquaintances and strangers in Uganda (if any of you are reading this all I can say is: I am very sorry. I will write back, I promise). The best explanation I can offer is that for now I want to exist as if that time in my life did not exist. For just a little while I want to forget how suffocating it felt as a woman to constantly be looked at and yet through. I want to refuse to remember that it took great energy to walk out the door every morning. I want to forget how regularly I felt silenced and how often I silenced myself. I want to not have to remember the frequency with which I questioned why I was there, what I had to offer and what everything I was seeing, feeling and experiencing meant. I want to forget the absolutely desperate want I had to come home and how I refused to admit this to most everyone. I want to not have to remember how far away I felt – from home, from myself and from everyone else.

People often asked and regularly assumed that it must have been hard for me to be in Uganda – both while I was there and since coming home I’ve heard many variations of “isn’t it/wasn’t it depressing?” I did not understand my experience to be depressing as I was living it. My heart ached for many of the people I shared time with, my mind struggled constantly to understand the reality around me, my gut wrenched often with dread and frustration as I tried to navigate my world, my eyes swelled with tears at times for no apparent reason. And yet I constantly registered my time in Uganda as an incredible experience.

I can’t really explain any of this. Perhaps in the stereotypical way that many people speak of, I am only just now beginning to process my experience and understand the impact it had on me, on decisions I made and on questions I am continuing to ask myself. I am sure that little of what I am feeling is unique. In fact, it was comforting to recently hear from a professor that her decision to enter academia – as opposed to a career as a humanitarian worker – had a lot to do with the profound discomfort she experienced as a woman in the field. At least I am not the only one.