Who is "We"?

I have officially completed my final hours in Kisoga at my internship with Compassion International! Praise God! I cannot believe I have spent 440 hours in the rural village of Kisoga—what a journey it has been. I did not really understand how much I had learned from the people there until it was time to say goodbye. I am sure I will discover so much more in the next few months as well. I came into my internship with the expectation that I was going to be doing social work, and I was going to acquire some significant skills to launch me into my career. And while this may be true in time, what I walk away from in my experience doing social work is nothing in the books. It is nothing that can be taught in the classroom. The most significant thing taken away from doing social work is this idea of “we”. At Compassion we are a team, so we refer to ourselves as we. When I am talking with people in the village they refer to us as “we”. This form of “we” is used to encompass a togetherness, a commonality of a group. So compassion is “we”, the people of Kisoga is “we”, and so on. This was very subtle at first but then it started to occur to me that I am outsider in Uganda and they were including me in their discussion of “we”.  Why? There could have been other terms used such as “her” and I could have used “them” or “they”, but no, it was “we”. They found it  fit to bring me to the inside, into their world to understand.

Our team at Compassion engaged in a bible study each morning of the work week and we would pray for various things including family members, Compassion as a whole, and personal issues. We would also pray for the county of Uganda. I admired how people would pray so feverishly for Uganda—how many times have a prayed for the United States? So at our last prayer meeting, I was closing in prayer and I said something along the lines of “Lord, I lift up the country of Uganda to you…” I didn’t think anything of it until the project director approached me later and sat me down to tell me something I will never forget. He said, “Ali, it’s ‘our’ country, not ‘the country of Uganda’.  This is your country too, you are now a part of it.” I was shocked, because I knew he was right. Even though my skin color is different, I don’t speak the native language, and I don’t have nearly the strength of an African woman, I now carry African in me. That is the most beautiful thing about this country is that Ugandans invite others into their life, they allow people to take part in who they are! This is seen in their unbelievable hospitality, encouraging words, and patience in letting outsiders learn their ways of living. They don’t have to do this. It would be easier to just keep visitors “out there”, that’s what the US does right? It takes too much time and effort to let someone be a part of you. This is another thing we need to learn from each other—to open up.

So as I leave Uganda, and prepare for 10 days in Rwanda, I exchange a piece of my heart, and she gives me part of hers. It is precious. No distance can take that away. And that’s the same with the people we have in our life too. Maybe that’s why saying goodbye is so bittersweet. Because we lose a part of ourselves in the exchange for a part of someone else. Uganda has taught me this, and I believe it to be vital in our world as division from race, language, tribes, ethnicity, gender, and social class rule how we live. When we look at the world as “we” and “us” instead of “them” and “they”, we become united people, capable of much more than we presently live.