Thursday, February 23, 2006
Jetlag: woke up this morning at 8:30. I hate insomnia, jetlag, and myself. I fell asleep at 6:30 pm Wednesday night (thank you jetlag) and then woke up at an undetermined hour. Everything was dark and the light in my room wasn't working and I couldn't tell what time it was, so I lit the candle, got my pajamas on and fell back into bed. Then I just lay there for a long while until the light in the room buzzed on (apparently the power had been out) So I got up, realized I had slept through dinner, had a granola bar, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, went back to bed and tried to read, but then realized the ghetto copy of the only novel I brought (cider house rules if you want toknow) was missing 50 pages in the middle. Annoying. So i tried to sleep. then I got up (around 1, I later determined) and wrote this below, which I type now.
As I write this, is is still dark out. I have spent the last seven hours (that's what I thought at the time but it was actually more like 5 hours I think. Maybe even... 2) productively by berating myself for falling asleep so early last night and for my undisciplinedness in general; wondering why I have come; feeling guilty for being here, being rich and white, taking with me a camera worth about three months salary of a local (and it's not even a fancy camera); thinking of all the ways I have failed in the past 12 months; looking forward to failures to come, especially in the next two months.
But despite this... it was a good day. I can't write about it in too much detail because I spent most of the afternoon writing about it in my "research journal". I will say that: I got to ride on the back of a motorcycle (boda-boda) and managed to become horribly lost, but still direct the driver back to my guesthouse; I met a Ugandan lecturer of anthropology whose nickname is "Chief Fire" for reasons that aren't yet clear to me; I made friends with a law student and a waitress and a pharmacist.
Also, I have taken the following as my motto:
"I discovered later, and am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes, failues. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own suffering, but those of God in this world. that, I think, is faith."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1944
As I write this, is is still dark out. I have spent the last seven hours (that's what I thought at the time but it was actually more like 5 hours I think. Maybe even... 2) productively by berating myself for falling asleep so early last night and for my undisciplinedness in general; wondering why I have come; feeling guilty for being here, being rich and white, taking with me a camera worth about three months salary of a local (and it's not even a fancy camera); thinking of all the ways I have failed in the past 12 months; looking forward to failures to come, especially in the next two months.
But despite this... it was a good day. I can't write about it in too much detail because I spent most of the afternoon writing about it in my "research journal". I will say that: I got to ride on the back of a motorcycle (boda-boda) and managed to become horribly lost, but still direct the driver back to my guesthouse; I met a Ugandan lecturer of anthropology whose nickname is "Chief Fire" for reasons that aren't yet clear to me; I made friends with a law student and a waitress and a pharmacist.
Also, I have taken the following as my motto:
"I discovered later, and am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes, failues. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own suffering, but those of God in this world. that, I think, is faith."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1944
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