The Fly Trapped in the Window

Do you wanna build a snowman?

I used to wonder why most college or high school kids relocating to developed countries spend more time on social media. Updating photo after photo on social media and crowning this with spam of video after video on Tiktok. I thought they were just showing off that they had finally moved to a place many of us dreamed of going to. They feel like they are situated in better places than the people they have left back in their homes. Little did I know that one day I would be recording myself riding a bike or another time trying to flex my rigid bones as I danced to Alien Skin's music or a random video of the least expected things I ever thought I would ever record; a video of me walking.

Each day that passes, you tell yourself. It will get better. The situation will get better. During the first weeks, all you will receive are those half-mouth-pouted smiles from strangers that acknowledge your presence. After the first month, you will become a casual recipient of "heys" from people around you. After two months, someone will seem interested in conversing with you, but it will be a one-time thing. You will meet another person and think, "Oya, I finally found a friend." But it will be a hologram in your life. With time, you will learn that talking to someone doesn't equate to friendship. You will be excited at finally seeing people and making friends during the first days of school. Still, their real friends reside within their phones, and their headsets produce all the sounds they desire to hear. Someone once told me, "You can be in the New York Times Square with a thousand people walking around you, and you will still feel like you are alone in a dark room."

Loneliness in developed countries is a reality, especially if you have just relocated from a society where community togetherness is a big deal. A lot of compelling research has been carried out indicating the epidemic of loneliness in developed countries. The U.S. Surgeon General indicates that nearly half of U.S. adults experience loneliness.

"My fulendi, I nearly packed my bags last weekend." My friend from Botswana told me one day after our morning math class.

I teasingly laugh at him.

"I felt like I didn't understand myself. I just cried." He adds

I have had my own episodes of that feeling. Nobody notices you, even those that do, don't really have time for you. People have so much going on, especially bills keeping them on a tight schedule. In these instances, homesickness sets in, and you miss everyone and anything back home. Some days you will even miss the embwa yo kukyalo that used to run after your chickens, and you had chased from your compound. Some days you miss the vegetable stall lady at the corner of your home. You miss seeing idle people sitting at the boda stage even though you know they were clearly always talking about how you walk like a crazy woman. You miss the little things of knocking at your neighbor's door and asking them for salt if your salt got depleted while cooking. You miss the random friend texts, “Oliwa." You miss receiving a sack of irish potatoes from your parents in the village. You miss someone noticing you for who you are and not your skin color. You miss hitting a pothole and someone screaming at the taxi driver. A friend in Ireland told me they were so happy to see a housefly trapped between the window glasses. It is rare to see some things.

At times you miss seeing something rugged with someone sticking their head through the window.

What don't you miss? But you remember how you took advantage of those moments and never really appreciated them. You never gave them the flowers they deserved. You didn't realize that you would once crave an argument with the market lady as she overpriced the tomatoes. I have actually learned homesickness is not about missing the main things. It's not about the lifestyle you live. It's the small components within that lifestyle. You barely spent your bank dry to move to a place and have fun; taxis and bodas always covered you. Now you are faced with high Uber costs and learning the allocated schedule for public transportation.

Indeed, the first days when you arrive, the excitement of relocating masks off the pain of what you have left behind. You play in the snow. You eat MacD's. The air seems fresh. No noise. It's a reciprocal of everything that you have been raised in.

To overcome the loneliness, recording TikTok videos becomes a savior. At least you will have two or three people comment on your social media post. The online community becomes your closest contact with the people and things dear to you. I have often talked to friends that relocated to other areas, and one amused me. She watches local television back home. She feels it builds an excellent connection for her not to feel alone. I bet my niche has been listening to music, a trick I learned from someone else. She said, "Listen to word by word." I barely pay attention to music, but listening to hardcore Ugandan music (kidandali), the likes of Alien Skin, Bobi Wine, Bebe Cool, Sheebah generally any artist that maintains a local Ugandan vibe helps fill the vacuum of loneliness. I pretty much thought I was the only one that would sometimes get very fragile and get triggered by anything, but it happens. Sometimes even a family walking past you may cause you to drop a tear in the corner of your eye, which you have to quickly dry up.

I am slowly becoming a famous chef in my world.

It's good when you talk to other students. It eases your loneliness. Everyone has sucked in the pain of loneliness and learned a way to keep themselves occupied. After all, the bills also won't pay themselves, so work on campus also helps fill that vacuum. Never have I watched as many series as I have watched in my life. It started with Tyler Perry's Sistas, then the Sex Life of College Girls, Ted Lasso, Sopranos, Euphoria, and Elite. The list is endless. Now I am almost done with Orange is the New Black. All those series in less than six months.

There are many ways to occupy the vacuum of loneliness, lest the feelings creep up your soul and cripple you. I am still learning all this, but for now, working out, cooking, taking walks, going to new places, biking, reading, watching series, making phone calls (hour-long phone calls), texting, and being ready to explore the new culture around me, are pretty much helping with the loneliness. Find your niche!

East or West, home is best sounds great, but remember to behave like the Romans do when in Rome and accept change before change changes you.