I trimmed my fingernails today, and when I got to my left thumb I realized I would be cutting off the last physical representation of Rebekkah and Avi’s wedding ceremony that I had been carrying with me since November.  I had a small brown line of henna, a basically permanent stain from the same paste that wore off my skin just a couple of weeks after the wedding.  Somehow I felt that this occurrence needed to be documented.

The day after the henna was applied, it appeared at its darkest. Until today, a line on my thumbnail was all that remained.

I seem to dwell on these physical symbols of experiences that shape me, particularly the monumental experiences.  Traveling in Mumbai and Goa for 10 days for Rebekkah and Avi’s wedding is one such experience; any scale of traveling can jolt me out of my routine and make me reevaluate my habits and my worldview.  When I return home, however, that new worldview to which I was exposed slowly fades.  I cling to tangible, wearable souvenirs as proof of the experience, trying to keep the memories more active in my daily life by having some representative THING.  I wore a friendship bracelet, blue and white, home from Finland as an anklet; it’s long gone now, of course, and I don’t even remember the details of who made it for me.  Katie and I bought similar anklets while traveling in France two summers later.

Though I put psychological weight into these THINGS, I know I embody my traveling experiences and they are now part of me.  This fact becomes evident in my anger every time I hear a generalization about Africa.  According to WorldAtlas.com, Africa is 8 times the size (area) of the US.  It is made up of 53 countries; when I think of the cultural differences within Uganda (about the size of Oregon), I can only begin to imagine the differences over the whole continent.  Basically I am overly sensitive to the way people talk about the continent.  I just have to remember that my experience of “Africa” is one small window on the continent so that someone telling a story about their experience is not wrong.  However, if they tell it like it represents the whole continent, I get mad.

Once again this blog serves an outlet for me, a place to vent my thoughts and frustrations about how to think about and live with these thoughts and realizations that come from visiting these places that seem so different from home.  The difficulty comes from my view that fundamentally they are not so different, though the problems the average person faces in India and Uganda are more about basic needs than I’ve ever had to worry about here.  So I’m faced with a conflicting desire to share my experiences by proclaiming on the one hand that not everyone is starving in Africa but on the other I want to increase awareness about the inequalities that do exist.  The world is a complicated place, and I’m still figuring out how to share my passion about our shared humanity.