Realization

Things are going well here! The culture is so different it's mind blowing. I'm learning a lot though. 
I've already seen some things that I will never and can never unsee.  Something that I will never forget is I was walking through downtown and a grown man was right in front of me, crawling on all 4s like a dog. His mouth was hanging open and he just looked up and looked at me with empty eyes that I couldn't read. His legs were shriveled and half the size of a regular man's and his feet didnt look like feet at all, but mangled up bone. He had polio, something that we as Americans don't even have to worry about Bc we get preventative shots as babies. I saw 3 other men crawling around with the same condition, legs dragging behind them with flip flops on their hands to prevent further damage. Just one example. 
Last night I just laid in bed and cried. I was thinking, "what am I doing here? Why am I a whole world away from everything and why are some of these people suffering so badly? Why was my spirit chosen in the pre-existence to go to the family/life that I was and they were destined for this? What can I do to help them?" I just prayed and prayed. Then I remembered the man with polio and thought, "A man with such a deformity could have just laid in self pity and realized his fate, yet there he was in the middle of downtown shops. He wasn't afraid to be out in public, he was out being proactive and being determined. There is beauty in all things." After that I realized that even though some of the things here will be super hard to see and handle (I probably will break down a few times) there really is a light in every situation and trial and I need to be constantly searching for that.  Now don't get me wrong, not everything here is doom and gloom. These people are so happy! It's incredible! They are waaaay more happy than any other culture/people I've encountered. They are so helpful, nice, and always smiling. It's refreshing! Also the babies here never cry, it's almost unreal! (except for one baby today that got dropped on the ground by another little kid bc a car was coming and was not stopping. Dont worry, I picked him up before the car drove by. He's fine.) 
Some of the people do very well for themselves financially, they may not have a super lavish life but they know what they need and what's important to them. A lot of people (excluding slums, that's a whole different story. I haven't visited that yet but I will probably be spending most of my time there starting next week) have their own trade that they can monopolize off of, this place is capitalism at it's finest. 
I went to a traditional African wedding today and it was great! There were actually a lot of similarities in the actual vow part. However it did last literally 7 hours, but i played with the children most of the time. They are such sweethearts and look after one another like they are each others parents. At the end a man said something to me (in Enlish after realizing I didn't speak Luganda. English is not their primary language.)  He said, "We may be poor, but we are happy. People mistake our problems." That really opened my eyes. They are not charity cases and don't need to be totally "changed", i mean after all they know the true meaning of happiness better than we do, but things CAN be improved at least. I thought coming here I would be "the light in the darkness" for these people, but I think it's the other way around. They're mine