How Boring

Katie with Ugandan children

Recently I have been looking back on my days thinking, “Wow my life is so boring.” I may be living in Africa but life starts feeling bland no matter where you live.

Sometimes I need to take a step back and consider what I think is “boring” again. As soon as I take a step back I realize that my life is pretty insane. I live in a house with 47 kids that barely speak English. Someone is always laughing, someone is always singing and most of all, someone is ALWAYS crying. Silence is a blessing that some of us don’t understand until we don’t have it.

It’s crazy how we can adapt to new environments. It’s crazy that it has become completely normal to me that the power goes out almost every single day, the WiFi rarely works, and that I cannot remember the last time I had a hot shower. It’s crazy that I have almost become completely blind to the poverty here because I see it every single day.

I’m used to all these things because Uganda now feels like a second home to me. I am showered with blessings daily! The children here are so happy! It’s a happiness so contagious you want to roll and play in the dirt with them until your clothes are stained bright red. My experiences are ridiculous! I frequently find myself eating foods that I absolutely hate. Foods like fish with eyeballs still intact, Posho (which is cornmeal and water), and smashed matoke (plantains)–the list never ends.

But it is the most wonderful thing in the world, that the gross food I have been eating is changing my life daily, making me grow as a person and making me go outside of my comfort zone. Living here has taught me that it is important to be very flexible and calm. For example, when your house gets invaded by cockroaches and you aren’t allowed to sleep in your house, or when a boy gets a crayon shoved up his nose by another kid and you want to lose your mind, but you can’t.

How can I think this is boring? I spend my weekends on the Nile River, the longest river in the entire world. I meet people from all over the world constantly, and I get to feel Jesus at my fingertips every single day. What a blessing it is to be so far away from everything you know and then fall in love with it.