Monstrous Moments
(and time in the Wilderness)
30.08.2012
I can’t believe we’ve survived the lecture phase! We finished the 12 -week lecture phase today, and start our ‘Outreach’ phase next week.
This means the end of what has slowly become a ‘typical’ day here:
The Gong
...gongs to announce the communal meal of posho, rice, beans and green, the end to each day in our classroom, with our African classmates who either look incredibly bored and disengaged, or have very very long personal or third party stories… 
Bored?
Bored-er?
and the end of tieless interpreters for our deaf classmates 
This week is the end of our community work duties, slashing, 
cleaning the latrines, and also the end of dormitory life here, where our neighbours sit outside our window making tea and toast on a tiny paraffin stove, talking loudly late into the night…
weird antics of our neighbours
It sounds clichéd but these three months have really challenged and stretched us in many many ways. Amelie has a great story called ‘When Mum Turned into a Monster’, unsurprisingly about a mum who gets increasingly stressed and on each page develops a long green tail, claws, bulging eyes etc, until at the end she is a fire breathing monster, who slumps onto the chair and sobs to her children, ‘I’ve become a monster’.
In some ways I feels that this period has turned me into a monster (especially at night time when the neighbours talk loudly outside our window…) But then, more encouragingly, this week we were reminded in class about how Jesus’ time in the Wilderness was his preparation time, and how it is often in the ‘wilderness times’ that we grow. Maybe, alongside our monstrous moments, this has also been a time of preparation...
Preparation to understand Ugandans and this culture better. Preparation to look at ourselves and see how we function (or don’t function well) in teams, preparation to see how we resolve conflict and preparation I guess for whatever the next chapter brings…
Amelie and lovely Lilian, the nanny
Posted by africraigs 12:31
Congrats on making it through the 12 week DTS! Praying for you as you move onto the Outreach phase. Love you! D.
by Denise