Sunday, February 5, 2012

Riding to church- mental toughness

I rode my bike out to Obule for church today. Last time (two weeks ago) I'm was bit upset that it took me about 20 minutes longer than it did before I was on furlough so, needing an excuse, I mentally blamed it on the fact that it was beyond 90 degrees already at 9am. But it was like salt in a wound that I was greeted at church a few times with “You have gotten fat!".   I had tried to prepare myself for this "complement", because culturally it is a complement, but it is still hard to hear.  On the way home as my legs were burning and my heart rate was only slightly higher than my core body temp and both were easily in the critical range and the only thing I could think of was finding a shady place to die and how most likely I actually had gotten fat.
But that was all two weeks ago and this morning I made it to church in 38 minutes (my fastest time ever!) and it was 95 degrees with a cross wind that felt like it was from a blast furnace. A week in Karamoja reminded me that in this place it is all about mental toughness and that it is a nice thing to be fat because that is what insulates your internal organs from cooking, or was that the fat around the internal organs is better for cooking... I don't remember. The point is... oh never mind, I don't have a point.

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