Well people, it's been a while. I've been home from tour for just over a month, and I feel like there is an overwhelming burden of story to tell, and I've only a feeble capacity to tell it. I think what I'll do is just start rambling on and on and see where it takes me.
Understandably, most people are insatiably curious about my reflections on the tour. The cynical part of me thinks that people just want me to give a 100% positive, packaged, "here's what I learned, and I'm so happy" response, even if it's insincere, but as we all know, we have to give people more credit than that. I've been pretty dodgy with my answers, and the reason for that is that I don't really know what the heck just happened. I'm pretty culture-shocked and feel as though I just jumped off a merry-go-round and am having to re-learn how to walk.
But hey, I'll give it a shot.
The tour itself ended in a way I can't describe. Satisfying? I guess. Climactic? Not really. Emotional? Only slightly. I feel like I should miss the kids more than I do. Sometimes I do, but only briefly, and only a couple of them. The way we ended knowing each other was strange. There was no way around it--we detached from each other, and we didn't even have to try to. The kids were checked out for weeks before they actually departed, and I was hanging by threads. I surely bonded with them, and made an effort to have a special relationship with each of them as individuals. And of course it was natural with some and damn near impossible with others, but I do feel that each of them knew I loved them and as ill-prepared as I was to be their uncle, I gave it my best shot.
Of course, there was far more to the tour and the job and the year than just knowing the kids and being their uncle. There was so much that they would never know about, so much that my staff will never know about, so much that only I will ever know about. I realized yesterday that there is absolutely nobody in this world who can understand on a meaningful level what the last year was like for me. Not former tour leaders--they had different staff, different children, and performed at 150 different places and are living different lives. Not Sherae or other staff members, as they had different responsibilities, and this last year means something different to them than it does to me. Not anyone in my office, because they have not endured the rigors of the tour, so their understanding is formed out of stories told to them and speculation. Try as anyone might with only the best and most pure intentions, nobody can understand what last year was like for me. And I have accepted that, as self-pitying as it may seem, and as lonely a place as it is. So forgive me if I don't try to explain to you what's going on with me. Forgive me if I just ramble. It's all I've got.
I don't miss the job. Make no mistake: it's hard. I gave it my best, and I blew it sometimes. All that failure compounded on me as the months went on and was really difficult to swallow. I had to accept that I wasn't going to be able to do everything I wanted to do and was expected to do, and I had to choose which things to fail at. I hate(d) that. So I had to make choices that negatively affected the fewest people, or at least only negatively affected the people that were on tour with me. Sometimes I had to make choices that pissed off my Ugandan staff in order to please the American hosts we had. Sometimes I had to throw the 14 of us under the bus (figuratively) to ensure that our organization didn't let strangers down. Sometimes I had to fight my bosses in the office, if only to delay having to cause more discomfort for the people I was responsible for on tour. Sometimes I just had to eat shit, and sometimes I didn't do it with any kind of grace at all. Sometimes I blatantly failed to do my job. And failure is not something I am comfortable with or easily accept. But it happened, it was a part of the job, and it's something I'm still dealing with.
The best part of the job and the worst part of the job are the same: the people we met. Just like any other group of people brought from any context or community, there are probably about 10% you naturally hit it off with, 10% you can't stand, and the rest are just around. The 10% groups are what I remember the most about the tour. 10% inspired me to live life better, 10% made me question everything. 10% gave me life & spirit to carry on with the mission, 10% drained the life out of me. Is this a surprise? It's the same with any job, I just happened to meet thousands of people in my job.
Now that I'm back, I think about the tour as a whole, and I reminisce positively about some of the wonderful things that happened. I think about how I was shown that God is indeed still here, still good, still worth fighting for. His is still a good providence, a good moral will, and also still an eternally-confusing idea. I saw that we don't give people enough credit. That most everyone has a deep hunger to be generous, to better the world, and to love. Most everyone is not as vapid and vain as we think they are. That people are more complex than any of us will ever understand, and that all my ideas about how people are or who people seem to be are almost all surely loaded with crap and nonsense. I really need to give that up, as we all do, but of course...thinking that way is how we're wired, and I doubt any of us even on our best days can really do that. But we'll keep trying.
I recently drove through some of the areas of the state that the tour was on in the beginning, and I was surprisingly filled with warmth and comfort. I didn't know what to expect--but I really liked it. It made me want to drive the tour again, just by myself, and go see everyone we had met (well, maybe not everyone). Of course I won't, but it was nice to have that feeling. Like it was no accident I went on tour.
I'll keep posting as I keep re-learning how to walk. The merry-go-round ride is over, that's all I know for sure. Thanks for checking in, and stay tuned.
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