Reflections on my experience in Arua

After a high stress 24 hours from Thursday to Friday, I am finally getting back to normal (today is Monday). It was a new sensation for me to feel so markedly unsafe in a place. Sometimes, when I watch scary movies, I can work myself into a tizzy and scare myself, but those around me just call me crazy! I know deep down that it is not a real fear and that nothing is going to happen to me. In Arua, however, for the first time in my life, it was not just me feeling unsafe – it was people native to the region saying that they could not keep me safe. It was very unsettling – so unsettling that I am only now feeling safe here in Bujagali!

When I arrived back in Kampala, I checked my email and saw the email from mom and various emails of concern from many of you. Thank you for your prayers. I went to bed feeling like my situation was tenuous, at best. When I woke up, I felt oddly enveloped in a sense of peace about the situation. I can only think that was your prayers, as I felt that way without knowing that people were praying for me – the sense of peace was not imagined.

In the end, I feel good about trusting my gut and ability to read nonverbal cues across social-cultural borders. It really felt odd in Arua and that feeling was confirmed by the elders’ discussion with Dut. Going to Arua was a changing experience – seeing Dut so happy and reunited with his dad was and is irreplaceable. It has also altered the way I think about the kinds of research I will be able to do. I am most interested in places that are recently post-conflict. Granted, Arua is still in a marginal conflict zone, but even that was too much for me. I am now in a funny place, wondering how to mold my research questions into ones that I can answer from a safe(r) distance. I guess Rainer Maria Rilke’s quote – listed below – is pretty applicable to and for me now:
I beg you… to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.