I had one of those moments today when you look at something, just briefly, and what your head registers is not at all what is really there when you look back. What I saw was a pickup with armed soldiers in the back. What was really there was a perfectly normal black SUV with a roof rack.
...
In the morning, riding the bus to work, I saw other people walking toward work, on the sidewalk, and I knew them, and it was a nice feeling to know that I live here, and I work here, and I know a lot of people, by name at least, to say hello.
...
I got a hard copy of the New Yorker that contains the article that inspired this post, and I was reading it while doing the elliptical this evening, and it all hit me again, the losses that we incur when we have to choose between the lives we love. They are nothing, these losses, compared to the losses without choice that come from fleeing your country after your home has been burned and your family members killed, but they are losses nonetheless.
I can be here, eating my delicious dinner of toast with cheese and tea while burning my spice-scented candle, but then I cannot be sitting in a make-shift shelter under a tarp eating warm, fresh flatbread with a cup of hot, sweet tea in a little clear glass.
I can watch the buildings on the far hill glow like fire in the setting sun as the bus crosses the bridge on my way home from work, but then I cannot be pacing under the overhang of the roof, trying to stay out of the rain and get reception for the satellite phone.
Things come back: the brilliant green of the grasses in the swamp in Southern Sudan, the view of Monrovia at night from just behind the Ducor, the Lebanese restaurant in Ethiopia with the huge circle of thin bread that we used to mop up far too much hummus and fuul late in the night.
You can't be everywhere; you have to choose, and you can't be everything, either.
A part of me wants to be an aidworker, that part of me that almost gave up law school for Chad in 2004, that part of me that almost gave up moving here for moving to a refugee camp on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia 16 months ago.
I could go back to that - I have the education and the experience. But you give up many things, like stable friendships and, in many places, a diet whose vitamins come from real food rather than pills.
A part of me wants to work in development, to be J & K, in Honduras, or K & P, as they were in Uganda, a family with kids growing up overseas, like I did.
Still, you give up many things. You can't go to the same parts of the country as a lone aidworker would (the interesting places), and you can't go to that raging party in Juba with the open bar. You give up Christmas at home with your extended family, and a place to belong in your home country.
A part of me wants to be right here, but I'm always aware that here, too, you give things up. It is not "sacrifice" to live there, and it is not all wonderful to live here. To be here, you give up the feeling of possibility, and many places that feel like home. You give up the chance to sit outdoors at restaurants all year long, and sometimes, it seems, truer friendships in exchange for pleasantries.
We all make choices, and we all have losses. Sometimes, I almost wish I could be oblivious to my options, because the choice would seem much easier.
...
In the morning, riding the bus to work, I saw other people walking toward work, on the sidewalk, and I knew them, and it was a nice feeling to know that I live here, and I work here, and I know a lot of people, by name at least, to say hello.
...
I got a hard copy of the New Yorker that contains the article that inspired this post, and I was reading it while doing the elliptical this evening, and it all hit me again, the losses that we incur when we have to choose between the lives we love. They are nothing, these losses, compared to the losses without choice that come from fleeing your country after your home has been burned and your family members killed, but they are losses nonetheless.
I can be here, eating my delicious dinner of toast with cheese and tea while burning my spice-scented candle, but then I cannot be sitting in a make-shift shelter under a tarp eating warm, fresh flatbread with a cup of hot, sweet tea in a little clear glass.
I can watch the buildings on the far hill glow like fire in the setting sun as the bus crosses the bridge on my way home from work, but then I cannot be pacing under the overhang of the roof, trying to stay out of the rain and get reception for the satellite phone.
Things come back: the brilliant green of the grasses in the swamp in Southern Sudan, the view of Monrovia at night from just behind the Ducor, the Lebanese restaurant in Ethiopia with the huge circle of thin bread that we used to mop up far too much hummus and fuul late in the night.
You can't be everywhere; you have to choose, and you can't be everything, either.
A part of me wants to be an aidworker, that part of me that almost gave up law school for Chad in 2004, that part of me that almost gave up moving here for moving to a refugee camp on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia 16 months ago.
I could go back to that - I have the education and the experience. But you give up many things, like stable friendships and, in many places, a diet whose vitamins come from real food rather than pills.
A part of me wants to work in development, to be J & K, in Honduras, or K & P, as they were in Uganda, a family with kids growing up overseas, like I did.
Still, you give up many things. You can't go to the same parts of the country as a lone aidworker would (the interesting places), and you can't go to that raging party in Juba with the open bar. You give up Christmas at home with your extended family, and a place to belong in your home country.
A part of me wants to be right here, but I'm always aware that here, too, you give things up. It is not "sacrifice" to live there, and it is not all wonderful to live here. To be here, you give up the feeling of possibility, and many places that feel like home. You give up the chance to sit outdoors at restaurants all year long, and sometimes, it seems, truer friendships in exchange for pleasantries.
We all make choices, and we all have losses. Sometimes, I almost wish I could be oblivious to my options, because the choice would seem much easier.
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