Lauren Learns Luganda

Greetings from a warm and quiet Kampala. Everyone is tucked into pubs watching the Euro Cup final game - I can hear cheers from nearby crowds - but I'm taking advantage of the stillness of the guest house to reflect a bit. It's been a strange week for me. I have been very distracted by what's going on at home, and very upset about the lack of progress and acknowledgement of structural racism in our country. I've been craving time with other Americans, to discuss and mourn and process alongside me, but my life here has been spent with Ugandans most of the time, and Europeans the rest of it. The shooting in Minnesota has been particularly painful for me, as it happened mere blocks away from where my mom attended school, and a 20 minute drive away from my own home. Meanwhile, however, my Luganda has been going very well this week, and I've had a couple of moments of language-learning exhilaration. It's been a week full of low lows and high highs. My successes t...

I'm not exactly sure how it's happened, but I have less than two weeks left in Kampala. As this week wore on, I started to sense a bit of panic rising up inside of me. Have I done enough? Have I learned enough? I finally feel settled in - and now it's time to go? Part of the panic probably stems from the fact that this week was, apart from daily class, a bit of a waste. I came down with a cold that everyone in my guest house seems to be sharing, and after class every day I was very, very tired. I went home to nap and to read, but had less engagement than normal with daily Ugandan life. I felt guilty about it - but also too tired to do anything else. Additionally, now that I am solidly outside of the "beginner" Luganda stage, I find it is harder for me to gauge my progress. Now that I am well past the early stages of just being happy to remember how to count to five in each noun class, or how to make a singular word plural, I am within the murky waters of an ...