I may be slightly obsessed with Cinderella. I don't know if it's the dress, the songs, the soundtrack or the general theme of living in destitution and then conquering it by kindness, rising to new heights to become queen. Rags to riches? Possibly. But the music is catchy.
There are few dreams that I've cherished more than that of living abroad (away from the U.S. and the life that I would have lived, there). The yearning for adventure, to explore things new and old, infected my heart as a young child, and it was only a matter of time before I became bored of the familiar comforts of home surrounding me, and sought out new thrills in the unfamiliar, wide wide world of the atomic bomb, advance of human rights norms and globalized economies.
International giants aside, I view the world much the same as I ever did, but from a deeper perspective. Finding out that there really are more than two ways to do things can set your mind on fire, and encountering the same resistance to change of opinion or perspective that I used to see at home is remarkably settling, in a place where so much is different. To find out that human nature is essentially the same all over the world is somewhat encouraging.
But it also forces me to reckon with my life in the U.S. in a new light. Now that I am living with less than whatever I had before, homesickness has set in "for all the wrong reasons", according to my seared conscience. I miss certain people, like my family and friends. But I also miss running water and furniture. I miss the infrastructure that could be relied on, and the accountability to which we subject our local, state and federal government to maintain it for public safety. I miss having a countertop. I miss having more money in the bank to buy whatever I wanted. I miss traffic lights and round-a-bouts the way that I used to miss fresh air and a view of the sky when I lived in Delhi.
What it comes down to is that I miss consumerism. It's a sly, guileful thing that creeps up on you slowly and tells you to buy this or that because it will make you feel better. As an ex-pat, it's easy to fall into this promotion because we are actually homesick, and buying what makes us feel at home (or makes this place feel like home) is such an easy thing to do. But it also inadvertently promotes the Western/U.S. ideal of life as having this thing or that thing, and the idea that happiness can be bought at a price. The town where I live now has a wide variety of and increasing number of ex-pats from all over the world, and as a result, restaurants that are either owned by or offer foreign food have sprung up out of the woodwork. Their menus are always more expensive than local Ugandan hotels, and their tables are always filled by well-dressed, lighter-skinned foreigners typing away on laptops who don't speak Acholi with the staff. And the foreigner who goes to a local establishment (versus the "muzungu" or "munu" restaurants, as I affectionately call them) are met with a mixture of surprise and pride, as one who appreciates the Ugandan as well as the munu tastes in life.
The more time that I spend here, the more I realize why it's so easy to think that life in the U.S. is a piece of cake: because it is. Compared to eking out an existence on a salary of 200,000 shillings a month (or less), barely farming enough to keep your family alive, dodging reckless drivers on dusty, dangerous roads, hauling home innumerable jerry-cans full of water on top of your head, and occasionally having to send your children to live with richer relatives in order for them to stay alive, a life spent going from a cubicle to a sandwich bar to a house with indoor plumbing and central air sounds like a daydream. Obviously, there are people in the U.S. who live with far less than what I describe as going from luxury to luxury every day. Poverty is poverty, no matter which continent you're on. But it also makes it more clear that happiness cannot be bought at a price. I used to suspect it, before. But now I know it. The dichotomy between needing a certain amount of stuff to stay alive and needing more and more stuff in order to be happy has never been so obvious to me, and yet I still don't know how to express it in a way for people at home to understand how lucky we are, without also making it seem like Ugandans are to be pitied, like their lives are somehow less vibrant because they don't have supermarkets the size of football fields to run to at their convenience or the money to shop at them.
Now that I'm living my dream, I realize what a luxury it is to dream of living without running water or a sustainable income in the first place, even in service to others or to explore the world. It isn't romantic. It's terrifying. Even so, there is incredible richness of life here - the community surrounding me, the neighbors who watch out for my cat, the teachers who work so hard to provide an education according to the government-issued curriculum, the pupils who are so eager to read and learn and discover new things, and the Ugandans who dabble in several different trades in order to earn an income - and in juxtaposition to what I am able to give, I am humbled by their grace, perseverance, hope and faith, and their generosity to me, as a foreigner. They really don't need anything from me, but together, we can dream and do so much more than what would otherwise be possible, if we had stayed apart.
If you want to read more personal reflections on my homesickness, feel free to check out my personal blog here.