Playing with Friends, Lake Victoria, Uganda
In my last personal blog about Kampala, I carped about the Muzungu. I've had a change of heart. I took some time this past weekend to remember what it was really like to be 19 years old.
It was amazing.
I was experiencing so many new things--so many wonderful things--and I was doing it with some of my dearest friends. Many have since faded out of my life and we have lost touch, but after visiting the Ssese Islands and seeing the throngs of late-teens and early-twenties Brits, I realize just how valuable and important that age was. My tolerance has come back and my acceptance is close behind. Being attached at the hip to my friends was a natural part of life. I wasn't trying to be annoying to outsiders, I was trying to understand my world. As I watched a group of 12 kids, mostly women and about 4 men, spend 3 days cavorting through our campsite together, I realized just how much fun they were having--and at no one's expense.
Running with Zulu, Lake Victoria, Uganda
I remembered going to York Beach in Maine with Barb, Noah, Dawn, Audrey, Lexa, Sam, Jimmy, Jack, Ted, Josh, Steffi and Seth. I vividly recall literally running around together like a pack of wild dogs, always making sure that someone was with us. Our pubescent brains were still growing and we needed each other.
At the top of our lungs, we would sing The Beatles, EMF and Billy Joel together. (Just typing those three musicians' names together makes me smile.) We would tell each other raunchy jokes, experiment with just how far we could "go" with a member of the opposite sex before that person became a mate and play on the beach until well past sundown, simply because we were so heartily feeding off of each others' wonderfully hormonal energy.
As I watched the young Muzungu romp around the Hornbill Campsite on Baggala Island, I smiled at them. Strange as they may seem, they aren't really all that different from me. I don't begrudge them their growth quite so much anymore.
Zulu and Friend, Lake Victoria, Uganda
No comments:
Post a Comment