Thoughts on assimilating back into 'normality'.

In three days it will be 4 years since we landed on Uganda soil and we landed back on UK soil 8 months ago. It would be an interesting study to see how people are affected by their time in Africa. This is my first public analysis of my own case.

There are at least two life-styles to chose between for ex-pats in Uganda: 'ex-pat', and 'integrated'. For ex-pats in good jobs the former means living at or above the lifestyle of the home-country, with the added benfits of the huge difference in buying power in a Developing country. So ... a huge walled-in house in a nice part of town, servants quarters, security guard, membership of a good club, kids at expensive private (predominantly) ex-pat schools, a large 4x4, lots of meals out, and almost all of one's time spent in the company of other ex-pats. Those involved in mission as volunteers or on low incomes easily get sucked into this life but because they don't have the income to sustain it they increasingly look to their supporters for help, without necessarily challenging themselves why, leading to tensions.

The latter, an integrated lifestyle, is one where most of one's friends are locals and thus most of one's time is spent with them. One becomes embroiled in the details and challenges not of other mzungus (foreigners) but of ordinary local Ugandans. The challenge of this lifestyle-choice is that mzungus are assumed by all but the most educated Ugandans to be so incredibly wealthy that they believe our pockets are bottomless. This leads to a daily tension between taking an interest in people and having to build a strong line of defence against being sucked daily into huge unsustainable financial demands.

We felt we should live the latter way. But in fact employing a local person in the home creates a job that can help support an entire family for around £30-£50/month. So nothing is quite as black and white as I set out above. Our total income in the latter two years was around £1250/month with the support element from friends averaging £550/month of this. A teacher in Uganda earns about £150/month if they are lucky but we saw many paid only £50/month or some as low as £25/month; a Ugandan will pay a houseboy/girl around £15/month plus free accommodation and daily food. Boarding school fees are around £80/term/child average; most employed Ugandan parents send their kids to a boarding school because it is cheaper after the transport and food are taken into account than if they were day students.

This gives some financial context. (One can see how tight life is for Ugandans with several children at school!!)

Now for expenditure. Many Ugandans eat only one meat meal a month, albeit in the Lake Victoria area fish may be eaten several times a month. People in our area live off maize flour mixed with water ('posho'), sweet potato, cassava, and other vegetables – with beans providing the main source of protein. Elsewhere g-nut (peanut) becomes the main protein source. They drink a lot of tea. Most Ugandans live off their land, and this may often have become very small through generations of division to successive family members. So around the heavily populated areas average land holdings can be 2-3 acres and it will be worked by the (unpaid) family members, often children whose fathers may resist sending them to school (especially girls who do most of the work!). Its hard to live off such a small patch of land especially with the appalling lack of good seed and poor farming knowledge in most cases.

By the time we left we were heavily involved in the care and financing of about 8 children or families, and hosting a weekly Bible-study/fellowship meeting in our home of about 15 local 17-25 year-olds. I was also managing 18 small business loans that I had arranged and this meant a lot of time and energy in coaching and mentoring people as well as coaxing them to pay up! I had helped set up a small NGO in Karamoja and this was beginning to unravel badly. Then 5 days before leaving I had my essential laptop, camera, records, etc., stolen from my side in the car, including £2,500 on its way to being changed into £GB from Uganda schillings to help us settle into the UK. Then a church leader 'ran off' with another £2,000 loan we made earlier to him and were expecting back.

So we left in a rather stressful climate!

For the first 6 months after returning I felt physically sick every time I thought about Uganda. It was not that I had lost my love for our friends, or failed to feel compassion for the nation, but rather that I felt such a conflict of emotions that my stomach knotted up. Because we were SO involved with so many people in Uganda I suppose it feels like my heart has been wrenched out of position! Over the last two months this feeling has changed to 'detachment'. Now I feel a long way from any community! Living as guests in others homes is a humbling and wonderful privilege but doesn't engender a true sense of 'being rooted'.

After being able to make such a huge difference in people's lives and be involved in transformational activity in Uganda and elsewhere in E Africa, the lifestyle of Welsh self-build and now unemployment – and feeling somewhat 'superfluous' in a very able and high-achieving nation – has left me drained and feeling it was all an unreal dream. Its as if there are parallel universes and I have lived in both ........ and neither!

The thing that has been constant throughout is the love of friends. And the sense of God's presence with us – mostly through the Christian fellowship in practical ways that is the chief evidence of God's transforming love. God reveals Himself through people's changed lives, I realise.

Normality! What is this elusive thing? We have yet to find it. What is clear is that the West has lost the sense of extended family and community ('together-givers', from the Greek) and the Church is the sole vehicle for some sense of this in many places back here. Our search for individual expression is myopic and empty. It leads to a lonely dead end. OK, it may be simpler but rich living comes from interaction and interdependence, not independence.