After about eight hours of sitting, my high school classmates and I stumbled out of the plane at 11 o’clock at night, attempting to wipe away the sleepiness from our eyes. We proceeded to trudge through the customs process for 30 minutes, and when we walked out of the airport, it was like breathing in water. Despite all of these factors, we smiled at each other because after 36 hours of traveling, we were finally in Africa.
When I heard about the ability to make this journey, the blood in my body pulsed with the longing to breathe the air of this place, my fingertips tingled with daydreams of feeling the vegetation I looked up pictures of, and my feet longed to roam the dirt roads I had dreamed about nights on end. But when I took that first step onto the dirt I was not feeling particularly confident. I was feeling nervous about being in a new place that I couldn’t even see yet. But I knew when I looked up and there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before that it would be beautiful.
We woke with the sun, shoved our bags into the bus and left Kampala, the capital of Uganda, for Kalungu, a small village where our sister school was located. This school was one of the most spectacular places I have ever laid eyes on; a red dirt castle with exquisite flowers of vibrant reds, pinks and greens. Dirt paths weaved through the yellowing grass while girls with shaved heads and plaid skirts stared at our white skin as we looked at this place in awe. The nuns welcomed us like we were their own. They gifted us American food alongside the traditional meals to make us feel at home, yet it seemed we already were.
Reginah and Vivian, two seniors, like I would become in the fall, were assigned for me to follow around that day. One of my favorite moments from the trip was when we had to clean their classroom. The girls would ask me to do something like sweep the classroom with a broom made of twigs, then proceed to chuckle good-heartedly at my inaccuracy when completing this task that they have been doing their whole lives. When we concluded cleaning the classroom and arranging the desks to perfection, they sat the Nebraskans down to braid masterpieces in our hair. This is when the real questions started, the questions that girls ask each other no matter where they are from; boys, actors, movies, Facebook names, and about our far-away home.
They interrogated us about all of these topics for quite some time, until something brought surprise to our pale faces and the tables turned. We discovered their fierce love for school and all it had to offer. They discussed their plans for university the next year and looked empowered with these feelings of their education and what it could lead to for them. They seemed to be from a different time period, because women were just starting to get accepted into college, yet they had such pure hopes of all that their life would turn out to be in the place they called home.
Going outside of my comfortable, personal bubble made an enormous amount of difference in how I viewed every aspect of my life from there on out. The stunning human beings I had the honor of meeting on this odyssey changed everything; made important relationships even stronger, material goods became irrelevant, and my education turned into more than just percentages on tests. It became my passion to do considerably more with my life than I ever thought imaginable. To learn not only how to get a job, but to have a career that makes me greet each day with the pure, simple happiness that Reginah, Vivian and my other Sacred Heart sisters viewed each day with.
I did not decide to go on this trip so that I could say I was worldly, I decided to go on this trip because I needed to. I needed to meet people who were not like the others I was around every day; white, privileged teenage girls who could have anything in the world. The people I met on this trip had absolutely nothing except the people around them, and they were the happiest people I have ever met.
I am a maker of more than just objects and things. I am a builder of moments that will never fade; when I had grasshopper for the first time and realized that it was crunchy, yet strangely delicious. A molder of human relationships; an African nun who said things I never thought I would hear a nun say because of this instant connection we had due to the sharing of a name. I am a child who is still trying to find out where she belongs in the world, and maybe just starting to realize that I belong with people that love me for all of my angels and demons. And a traveler who lives to journey to the unknown despite the risks. As JRR Tolkien wrote, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to."
