I feel sort of boring lately. There really isn't much to describe in TLT once you cover the tukuls and the airfield and the swamp. Also, what with the rain and the mud, I haven't actually gotten to leave the territory since Thursday. My days (even Saturday and Sunday) look pretty much like this: get up, shower, try to find something to eat for breakfast with varying success, head to office, work on computer for a while, eat lunch, work on computer for a while with maybe some breaks to have meetings, eat dinner, watch some tv (so far some bad movies - have you seen Date Movie? worst move ever. worst. - some sports, some news) and go to bed, usually by 10 p.m. And then get up to do it all over again.
I could switch to writing about things like issues, but I find that most people who write about issues are, well, boring. Apologies to anyone who does write about issues. I'm sure you are the exception. But generally, it is very hard to write well about issues. Also, I have a problem with being told what to think and therefore with telling people what to think, even though I have strong opinions myself. When I read those books that tell a story and then extrapolate to tell you what the story means, I get helplessly irate. Give me the STORY and let me make up my own mind about what it means. I want to snatch the story out of the writer's hand and say, "Let me see it MYSELF." Christian books and authors seem to be particularly bad about this, which is why I have stopped reading them almost completely.
One of the blogs that I used to read, which has since turned into a daily photoblog, said that the blogs she most enjoyed reading were those that captured moments of the joy in life. I liked that, and I've tried to do some of that this summer, in Michigan and then here. I haven't always managed, especially since I've been here in TLT. I find myself enumerating (okay, whining about) the physical difficulties and dangers of living in a swamp in the middle of nowhere, but the truth is that they are really not that bad - not anything I haven't lived with before. And they should be, as they so often have been in the past, superseded by the joy of sitting in an open air mess hall in the evenings hearing stories about everyone's respective countries (which other than mine and a European country, are Uganda, Kenya, and Sudan). I can't capture that feeling this time, though. Always before, every single time I've been in Africa, I've felt sheer joy at being on the continent. Homecoming.
This time, I feel uneasy. I feel like I'm in the wrong place. I feel like I shouldn't have left Michigan. I was feeling this way even before I left the US. I like to blame the Larium for the fact that mere hours after I took it (also hours after saying goodbye to my grandmothers) I switched from great excitement over this trip to South Sudan to dread, not about arriving in the place I was going to but about leaving the place I was in. It was harder than ever to get on a plane and the joy of being in Africa has only come in snatches.
I've been in too many places in the last three years. I've had three or more addresses a year. I've met and lost too many people. Doing it again - moving somewhere for three months - feels too hard. It is the moving again, not the pit latrine, that makes it hard for me to be here in TLT.
I could, and I would love to, live in Africa again, but I'm starting to feel a need to have some stability, and some friends who last more than a few months, and I'm in the wrong field if I want that in Africa. The law field for a US American in Africa seems to require either living and working in the most remote, conflict-filled areas (refugee camps, etc.) or some experience to offer in a more central location. I don't yet have the latter and I am no longer willing to do the former. I am not willing to move every few months or years. I am not willing to lose many of my friends even more often than I move, when they move. I am not willing to live in team housing with no space but a bedroom that is really mine.
This is essentially a rant to explain why I spent my afternoon today looking at apartments in a relatively big city on the West Coast of the US. I know people who thrive on the movement, the new faces, the changes, the new places. I don't. I need a home, a base. I don't even like backpacking vacations because I hate being in a new place every night.
I had a home in Rwanda. I had my books on a shelf and my food in the cupboard and my candles in strategic places for when the power went out. I knew my way through the house in the dark so that I didn't even need the candles. I had friends who I could call when I was bored. I had favorite walks in the hills. I felt safe. I haven't had that since, and I need it.
So I'm moving to Relatively Big City in December, and I'm taking the bar exam in February. And I'm going to try to find a job. I'm going to find a little apartment and own my own furniture and dishes. I'm going to learn to be a real lawyer.
I know that I will miss Africa. It is half my life, nearly. I also know, though, that I will be back. I can't stay away long. But when I come back, I know now that I need to make sure that I'm really coming back, to live, not just flitting around short-termly (other than vacations, obviously, which I will totally do - I have people to visit, after all).
Outside, six or seven men are trying to push-start the car in the perfectly flat yard. It's really not going that well. They've been trying for fifteen minutes. There isn't even a slope. Oh! They got it. The battery dies every day, and they charge it with a solar panel sometimes, but I think the solar panel was someone else's and we gave it back. Or something.
I could switch to writing about things like issues, but I find that most people who write about issues are, well, boring. Apologies to anyone who does write about issues. I'm sure you are the exception. But generally, it is very hard to write well about issues. Also, I have a problem with being told what to think and therefore with telling people what to think, even though I have strong opinions myself. When I read those books that tell a story and then extrapolate to tell you what the story means, I get helplessly irate. Give me the STORY and let me make up my own mind about what it means. I want to snatch the story out of the writer's hand and say, "Let me see it MYSELF." Christian books and authors seem to be particularly bad about this, which is why I have stopped reading them almost completely.
One of the blogs that I used to read, which has since turned into a daily photoblog, said that the blogs she most enjoyed reading were those that captured moments of the joy in life. I liked that, and I've tried to do some of that this summer, in Michigan and then here. I haven't always managed, especially since I've been here in TLT. I find myself enumerating (okay, whining about) the physical difficulties and dangers of living in a swamp in the middle of nowhere, but the truth is that they are really not that bad - not anything I haven't lived with before. And they should be, as they so often have been in the past, superseded by the joy of sitting in an open air mess hall in the evenings hearing stories about everyone's respective countries (which other than mine and a European country, are Uganda, Kenya, and Sudan). I can't capture that feeling this time, though. Always before, every single time I've been in Africa, I've felt sheer joy at being on the continent. Homecoming.
This time, I feel uneasy. I feel like I'm in the wrong place. I feel like I shouldn't have left Michigan. I was feeling this way even before I left the US. I like to blame the Larium for the fact that mere hours after I took it (also hours after saying goodbye to my grandmothers) I switched from great excitement over this trip to South Sudan to dread, not about arriving in the place I was going to but about leaving the place I was in. It was harder than ever to get on a plane and the joy of being in Africa has only come in snatches.
I've been in too many places in the last three years. I've had three or more addresses a year. I've met and lost too many people. Doing it again - moving somewhere for three months - feels too hard. It is the moving again, not the pit latrine, that makes it hard for me to be here in TLT.
I could, and I would love to, live in Africa again, but I'm starting to feel a need to have some stability, and some friends who last more than a few months, and I'm in the wrong field if I want that in Africa. The law field for a US American in Africa seems to require either living and working in the most remote, conflict-filled areas (refugee camps, etc.) or some experience to offer in a more central location. I don't yet have the latter and I am no longer willing to do the former. I am not willing to move every few months or years. I am not willing to lose many of my friends even more often than I move, when they move. I am not willing to live in team housing with no space but a bedroom that is really mine.
This is essentially a rant to explain why I spent my afternoon today looking at apartments in a relatively big city on the West Coast of the US. I know people who thrive on the movement, the new faces, the changes, the new places. I don't. I need a home, a base. I don't even like backpacking vacations because I hate being in a new place every night.
I had a home in Rwanda. I had my books on a shelf and my food in the cupboard and my candles in strategic places for when the power went out. I knew my way through the house in the dark so that I didn't even need the candles. I had friends who I could call when I was bored. I had favorite walks in the hills. I felt safe. I haven't had that since, and I need it.
So I'm moving to Relatively Big City in December, and I'm taking the bar exam in February. And I'm going to try to find a job. I'm going to find a little apartment and own my own furniture and dishes. I'm going to learn to be a real lawyer.
I know that I will miss Africa. It is half my life, nearly. I also know, though, that I will be back. I can't stay away long. But when I come back, I know now that I need to make sure that I'm really coming back, to live, not just flitting around short-termly (other than vacations, obviously, which I will totally do - I have people to visit, after all).
Outside, six or seven men are trying to push-start the car in the perfectly flat yard. It's really not going that well. They've been trying for fifteen minutes. There isn't even a slope. Oh! They got it. The battery dies every day, and they charge it with a solar panel sometimes, but I think the solar panel was someone else's and we gave it back. Or something.
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