Somehow, it feels like Sweden is a bubble, filled with what is good in the world. People trust each other. The train is on time. Ten-year-olds take the bike to buy an ice-cream. Alone. Twelwe-year-olds can visit the funfair with a friend, without parents or adults. We have delicious cheeses, ten different kinds of creams and brown, almost black, whole grain bread. And we don’t have to check expiration date on every product and make sure everything is fresh before we eat it. Best of all – in Sweden we can walk into any library and a knowledgeable librarian is guiding us through millions of books to the best ones. And we walk out with twenty books each, this years’ summer reading, and we haven’t paid a single crown.
We have lived abroad for four years now. We know what we appreciate with Sweden and by now we know how to fully enjoy what our home country can offer. We were sad leaving friends, family and a beautiful summer behind, but arriving to Uganda on Monday night was pure happiness. Back to roads full of pot-holes. Back to the red clay and sunsets with orange light. Back to hectic street life and boda-bodas overtaking on the wrong side. It is such a different world. And on Tuesday morning I found myself checking expiration dates on every product in the supermarket with a happy smile on my face. No cheese today, ok, I ‘ll buy jam. Poverty is never charming, but inefficient supply-chains and the absence of computerized orders and deliveries are part of this country and reminds me of the fact that we are so far from a high-tech, fast running and super-efficient western world were sicknesses are developed because people are too stressed. There is a backside of every coin. I guess it is a choice you make; to learn to live with the backsides and enjoy the flipsides.
Enjoying life is rather a balancing act between being comfortable in everyday life and what is familiar, and exploring challenges and new situations. Coming back to Uganda was returning to familiar surroundings and friends. Sweden was surely familiar in some remote sense, but more of re-exploring events and activites. Like meeting a cow on the terrace. Or eating fresh water crayfish in poring rain under a party tent. Or paddling a canoe straight into the reeds. To us, such moments are exciting and memorable but are probably routine to most Swedes.
Even being bored is new to our children. Not have tons of friends around, or a day-guard to play fotball with, made the children experience severe boredom. It took a while, but then we noticed new creativity popping up, smaller and larger projects were launched and suddenly there was a tent in our garden in which Telma and Teo slept several nights.
Everybody talks about the great weather we had in Northern Europe this summer. It probably contributed to our great summer, but we suspect that it is rather the fact that we are so happy in Uganda that made us appreciate Sweden. We simply enjoy being expats, having two (well, three!) worlds that are familiar to us in which we can still explore news and be excited about.
livetiuganda 