I am writing this on my last night at my site, in attempts to prolong my time here just a tad more by staying up past 8:30 pm. I would be lying to say I haven’t had to consistently sing the Glee soundtrack in order to keep my mind off how hard it is going to be to have to pull myself away from this place, the place that has become my home and small haven and, at the same time, the source of most of my trials and frustrations for the past two years. Knowing all of this, I don’t think my mind has fully recognized this and I don’t think it will until the end of a month or two at home and I realize that I don’t have to get on yet another 17 hour flight and then on public transport in order to get myself back to my site. But, despite of all that I have a pretty good gut feeling that it is my time to go here and that it is time to move on to the next thing.
With these two years behind me, there are two notions I feel I have really comprehended that I would like to share. Take it as seriously as you would like and know I write this with a sense of humor. I am, after all only 24, and my wisdom to date is still biased with a tinge of the hopefulness of youth. Also, this is a small continuation of the last post and are the main things I feel I am taking with me as I go, which isn’t saying much, because I am sure as I drive away from my house tomorrow I will think up something different, but this is what I am thinking on my last night here. My first lesson was to just embrace things, in particular a sense of adventure, what you are feeling, and if you can’t change anything about a bad situation, embrace what good you can find in it. My Peace Corps service has been an adventure, and it has been enlivening to use that to describe my life. From here on out, I am going to try to instill that sense of adventure in as much of my life as I possibly can. Everything from moving to New York to driving up to the gas station to get Diet Coke will be an adventure, well, probably not, but life is a little bit more fun if you think of it that way. Going along with this is embracing what you are feeling. I never realized it before but at home I shied away from emotions, whether from being embarrassed by them or not knowing how to correctly express them, but with as much alone time that you get in Peace Corps and living in a somewhat isolated situation, you come face to face with your demons and to just admit, ‘yeah, that was embarrassing’ to yourself is pretty liberating and helpful. I have found that a situation is less embarrassing, less frustrating or way more fun or exciting if I admitted it to myself. This has made stuff here a little more bearable and I think this will help me, as long as do correctly express them and not in some warped way I don’t realized is warped after living 2 years in Africa. Lastly, to embrace the good in everything, even in really bad situations. After hearing so many stories, some painfully heartbreaking or just about the horribly frustrating situations that you find yourself in here, it is easier to deal with or will weigh on you just a little bit less if you find the good. My favorite example is after traveling like 6 hours on public transportation that should really only take 2, me and two of my friends were on our way back to my site grumpy, scrunched in the back seat with no leg room, it was getting cold and dark and our taxi had just broken down, when my friend points out a man who had just bought a live chicken and was carrying it home in a Kentucky Fried Chicken paper bag, and instantly our whole trip became worth it. I know I won’t see that at home and having that kind of attitude gets you through the bad stuff.
The next lesson dawned on me in a taxi, as most worthwhile thoughts of mine do. I don’t know why, riding those taxi’s can be just awful, but the minute it gets going and I put my iPod in, bam, I’m freakin’ Socrates. To be fair I did not just think this on my own, but was listening to K’naan, a rapper from Somalia, who, even though I’m not the biggest fan of rap music, I really like. In his song “Take A Minute,” he says “It’s not every day you get to give.” With my rapidly approaching departure, I realized how extremely true this is. The minute I step out of my clinic tomorrow, I won’t be able to help the people here anymore in the way I have in the past two years. I realized how many opportunities I have missed, just small everyday ones I have missed and felt a huge pang of regret, because I will never get that back, but it also made me realize that, no, I don’t get the opportunity to give every day, but to jump when the chance comes. Maybe when all is said and done, these two years have been worth it to just learn that, and not just to hear it and say, “Oh, that’s good advice,” but to really learn it and take it with you and make it a part of your moral self. This sounds a little cheesy, but things become ‘cheesy’ when they are used a lot, and they are used a lot because, a little bit, they are true. So knowing when I get the chance to give, how to discern what I can give and then going through with it was, while it would seem a pretty easy lesson to learn for someone who is leaving home for two years to help people in Africa, kind of a long time coming. Now that I know it I really want to put an effort forth to follow through with it which will be a challenge, but a welcomed one.
With those things learned, I am taking off tomorrow to Maseru, to do three days of ‘Close of Service’ paper work then head on over to Zanzibar and then finally home to St. Libory, where I will, inevitably weird people out with my even more awkward social habits. So please forgive me when I wave at you with both hands or make wildly inappropriate jokes or store my money in my bra, I’m sure they will fade away but, as I have assured everyone here and I most definitely know, my memory of my time here will not fade. With any luck those memories that do fade will be just the unpleasant memories, allowing me to cling to the good memories that I hope will one day lure me back to Africa.
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