Thirty something days until...thirty something days to fill in advance with the things I know from experience will be most missed. Consciously and sometimes not I already find myself standing too long in a hot shower. I overindulge in cheese and yogurt and all those things that require the presence of a refrigerator in one's life, knowing full well that soon cheese will come to mean an occasional treat of a triangle of strange stuff bearing the image of a laughing cow (laughing, I'm sure, at the thought that some would consider the contents to be cheese). I'm drawn to the smörgåsbord of international cuisine that's available to me here, to seeing the latest films, to going to the theater and eating Cheetos just because for a little while longer, I can.
Thirty something days to overindulge my trusty dog in the hopes she'll not decide she loves her foster 'parents' more than me and sulk when the months are gone by and it's time to come back home with me. Days to fill with preventative inoculations and dental checkups and visa applications and nights to obsess over not having a loving face to memorize up close and keep ready for the nighttime ritual.
Each day in Africa ends, for me, with a need to recount the day and either laugh or cry...often alone, I resort to telling the day's stories to a pitch black sky filled with unbelievable numbers of stars, close enough to touch. I tuck myself in, under the mosquito netting around my bed, and not having a wealth of prayers in my repertoire, calm myself with some combination of “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” and the Serenity Prayer. And I learned, last time, that it's enough, well almost enough, to then be able to conjure up the vision of that loving face...there to listen and share and hold tight to til it all starts again with the next sunrise. And yet, with or without a face safely stowed in my carry-on luggage, I choose...
I choose to go back. I've finally got part of the answer to the “what's in it for you?” question that everyone who works in international development needs to search for the honest answer to. Africa is teaching me remedial lessons I somehow missed in the somewhat dysfunctional course of my life. Africa is introducing me (never too late) to a gamut of honest-to-god emotions...forcing me to express them, and trust them, and honor them as real. In the extremes of any African day, it is impossible not to feel and express the spectrum that is somehow kept tucked away, or denied, or at best politely muted or timidly acknowledged here...In Africa, I am flat-out angry, joyful, terrified, hopeful, sad, proud, fearful, frustrated, lonely, grateful and fearless. In Africa I laugh from my belly and can soak a pillow in tears. I choose not to miss the opportunity to keep learning these things, late perhaps, but never too.
Today I spent twenty minutes inside a noisy MRI machine, having my brain scanned. I needed a plan to deal with the otherwise inevitable claustrophobia...I chose to shut my eyes tight and spend twenty minutes walking through my Tanzanian village, seeing the faces of the friends there, smelling the ever present smoky smells, pausing for cows to cross the sandy road, hearing the greetings and the taunts of nervous children. I smiled at the thought of the MRI technicians maybe puzzling over a spot detected in the scan...glowing warmly with the distinct colors of an African sunset.
I choose.
