This is something I wrote as a class assignment about a year ago. I think it definitely sums up the confusion of my life, and so I thought I'd share it.
I have often said to my family that I live entirely in an “in-between” world. I do not exactly belong anywhere, am always different from those surrounding me. There are many examples of this. One reason for this is that my cultures make me very different. I am American, but I only lived there until I was ten years old, before my parents and I moved here to Uganda. Because of this, some of my most important years have been spent in the US, but some of them have been spent here, so I’m not really American, but I’m also not Ugandan. Plus, I’m not quite the average third-culture kid who grows up in Kampala and just goes to school; I live at a university a ways outside of Kampala and therefore have a lot more direct cultural interactions. And yet, after all these years, I still do not belong in a strictly Ugandan setting. But, I go to school in Kampala, where I am still different. I don’t belong there, either.
I am majorly between two groups of friends. One group is my school friends, other international students who, for the most part, despise Uganda and hide away from interacting with the culture. Then, there are my other friends, those made during my years of homeschooling with my mom at the university we live in. These friends are total opposites, while my school friends have huge amounts of things and live very sheltered lives my friends here in Mukono have nothing. My favourite example of this is my close friend Bridget, who I only see for a few months a year as she is in boarding school. Bridget spent most of her life in a one-room accommodation, with the kitchen and latrines outside. She is a brilliant, lovely girl and I love the moments I get to spend with her. I do not quite fit in with my school friends as I prefer to spend my time raising money for an under-privileged school in the war-torn region of Northern Uganda than drinking and texting on my iPhone. This creates a barely bridgeable gap between me and my school friends. On the other hand, I have my own computer and iPod, so much more than what Bridget has, and I have had incredible life experiences that she will never have. This puts a difficult distance between us despite the fact that we are close friends regardless of our differences.
During the school days, people see parts of who I am, and judge me accordingly. It has taken a long time for people to stop assuming that I am a rigid Christian who will never have any fun, never have a boyfriend, and despise them for what they do. On the weekends, people see one side of who I am, and judge me accordingly. We live at a Christian University, where people tend to focus on not drinking and living a perfect life. They expect me to think along the same lines all the time, and I am often too nervous to do what I desperately want, to shout out at the top of my lungs “I am not perfect!” I do, however, have strong beliefs and a strong faith, which I try to make one of my more defining features. This keeps me apart from my friends, who prefer to stay out all Saturday night smoking marijuana and drinking than getting up and going to Church (not that I can possibly say I go to Church more than every other week). Sometimes I don’t go to Church because I can’t stand being told yet again that “Christians don’t drink or dance” and that I should spend my entire life in prayer. I’m simply not going to obey those guidelines, but I won’t go to some of the extremes (ie drugs and getting drunk) that my friends do.
Then there are the rules I’m somehow supposed to know by heart and follow. According to people at the university, I should never wear anything that comes above the knee. According to my friends at school, I should wear the dress that comes about three inches above my knee with no leggings because I have nice legs. Then my friends in the US wear mini-skirts and outfits that I would get yelled at for wearing on campus. Honestly, one day I tried going to the store on the way to a friend’s house in a pair of modest shorts. I will never make that mistake again. Add on the whole concept of dating. I have literally been told at a youth camp that you should not date until you think you may marry the man. Dating is totally taboo, especially for someone my age. Then I go back to the US where not only is it expected that I have a boyfriend, I’m asked probing questions about boyfriends by people at my church. Which set of rules am I actually supposed to live by?
People try to simplify me, perhaps they find me confusing. They try to put me into one bracket or another, sometimes trying to change the way I think about things (like telling me that I really should have just a few more drinks, that hooking up with a bunch of guys is cool) or by telling me that I should be a perfect little Church girl. Somehow, I manage to break the mould every time, creating what sometimes feels like a chasm between me and most people around me, aside from those who really know and accept me for who I am.
