Soul Food

My mom shared some wisdom with me the other day. There are two kinds of food that nourishes our spiritual selves, World Food and Soul Food. World food is like crispy cream donuts. It's for the ego like being congratulated on a job well done. Tasty. Soul Food is all vitamins. It's for the body, mind, and the spirit like watching the sunset into the ocean. Delicious.

The other day was soul food for me. Hakim came to get me around 1 to go play soccer. He is a P6 student at Hope. His mom is Rwandese and his father is from West Uganda. They have a small house with a few things and hearts that could fill a small stadium. We went to the pitch for an hour and a half. There was a game going on so we just juggled. It felt good to juggle again. It is a game that connects me with anybody else that finds pleasure in its simplicity. Everywhere around the world kids right now are passing a ball between one another. It matters very little where you come from when the ball is in the air. Once we stopped there was time for questions form the crowd that had gathered to meet this new whiteboy: Where do you come from? Do you like Michael Jackson? Can you breakdance? They came so quickly there was barely time for an answer. I must have done okay because when I left we were all friends. Hakim helped me find my way back home, but he wasn’t finished with his immersion lesson for the day. He insisted I come back over for dinner and a movie. He showed up around 7:30 and led me in total darkness jumping over ditches and ravines back to his house. We talked about carrots.

His house was a brick house as many are in the city. The door is always left open because visitors are always welcome. And with just one window it can get a little stuffy. Everyone drapes a sheet over the threshold for privacy. That's how you know it is a house and not a store. There were three rooms: one for living, one for sleeping, and one for bathing. I sat on the couch in the living room beside one of Hakim’s sisters, Nifa. We watched a DVD of popular music videos. Some of the children were signing along, others were laughing, and others were dumbfounded why a Muzungu was in the living room. Hakim kept running outside to check on dinner. He had prepared the Ugandan favorite of matoke, boiled bananas, and cow peas. They served me a hug dish and I polished it off willingly. All that was left was to watch a little WWF before calling it a night. All the kids and the parents loved it. They laughed and the kids imitated the wrestlers. It was the first time I really enjoyed watching wrestling. It started raining very hard just as my time to leave was arriving. They insisted that I either spend the night or let them borrow a car to drive me home. I told them my wife might get worried if I don’t come home. They agreed, handed me a rain jacket, and hurried me out the door. Thanks Hakim. Soul Food feeds you for a lifetime because it never expires. Praise.

(to not confuse anyone, this picture was not taken here.)