This week marks
six months – six months! – since I left the steep, winding red road, the humble
homes scattered among waxy green banana fields, and the rushing streams of
Uswaa, Tanzania. Six months since my
best friends lovingly wrapped my belongings into a suitcase, and closed the
door of my home behind me for the final time.
Six months since we sat in the fading glow of the African sunset,
waiting on the step for rickety school truck to pull up – our beloved driver,
again, was late because he was selling chickens to the villagers – and begin
the dreaded journey to Kilimanjaro International Airport.
Six months have
passed since this day, and they have not been my most gracious days. Still, those six months have been spent with the uncommon luxuries of doing laundry by machine, pizza at my beck and call, and seeing my family whenever I please. Former volunteers speak of the challenges of readjustment
after service. What they don’t tell you
is that Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, but rediscovering America is
a mission for each returning American to do alone. My readjustment process, save for
two-and-a-half strangely quiet weeks spent at home, has been spent exclusively
in medical school. School began for me
before I could properly unpack my bag, and on most days leaves me without time
to process and reflect the readjustment process. In a rare hour of assembling my thoughts, here
is a collection of the 10 things that I miss most, and how rediscovering them
in America could transform all of our lives in baby steps:
1. Incessant
knocking
 |
A photo a friend shared yesterday - arriving home
from a day of teaching to a balcony full of girls waiting
for me at home. What's to be done with them?
PC: Mary Gillis |
·
The
first three months in my village were strangely lonely for me - while I worked to find my niche in the
community. Then, once Uswaa Village and
my school realized I was willing to do anything I was qualified or preposterously
unqualified for, there was a constant flood of humans knocking on my door. My assignment in Peace Corps was to teach
science subjects. What did I spend most
of my time teaching? Football, netball,
and morning yoga. Computers, music, and
art. Energizers and silly songs. Choir!
A village drama group. Malaria, HIV,
and first aid. My living room became a
place where painting, drawing, and dancing would take place on one side, and an
impromptu meeting with a youth leader on the other. I learned to always have a thermos full of
the sweet, spiced milk chai that Tanzanians loved so much, and plates of sliced
fruit and corn to pop for visitors who might drop by.
·
Some
days, when I had 5 am visitors, I cursed them under my breath. Let me elaborate. In the U.S., when a visitor rings the
doorbell, he might wait a minute before ringing it again, then take his
leave. In Tanzania, doorbells do not
exist, and neither do the rules.
Visitors will come at all hours of the day, only knocking and calling
louder if you don’t immediately answer.
So
what do I miss about incessant knocking?
I miss knowing my neighbors. Last week, I arrived home on a blustery,
frozen evening, to remember that I had left my keys inside that morning. My roommates weren’t home, nor were a few
friends that I had in the area. In our
community here – clean, white condominiums skirting an impeccably-manicured,
under-utilized courtyard – I couldn’t just knock on a random door and expect to
be shown inside.
It occurred to me that
I don’t know even know half of my neighbors, and I’d hardly feel comfortable
knocking on their doors. Something to
think about, reflect on, and make conscious changes about.
2. Sunday
afternoons
·
In
Uswaa, there is no day like Sunday.
Morning services start in the morning at the various churches – and the
villagers trickle into the pews for the next two hours or so. Clapping, song, and dance are heard from all
sides of the mountain, while goats, chickens, and other goods donated to the
weekly auction join in the celebration.
In the afternoon, when services conclude, women in their parrot-hued
dresses, men in their shiny, bright dress shirts, and children who seem to have
already lost their shoes head back for the most awaited time of the week –
Sunday afternoon.
·
Sunday
afternoon, for me, often meant that a village family would slaughter their
fattest chicken because I was coming for lunch after church. It meant receiving armloads of bananas,
passion fruits, avocados, and greens on my path through the village. It meant feeling in the truest sense what it
means to “love your neighbor.”
If only, if only, a small part of these glorious Sunday afternoons could make its way back into our lives.
3. “Manka”
·
“Manka,”
is a fond nickname in Kichagga (the tribal language of the proud Wachagga
people of Kilimanjaro) for the second-born girl in a family. The second-born girl is particularly beloved in
Chagga culture because she’s a little bit sweet, and a little bit sassy. I had many, many nicknames throughout my
Peace Corps service (not all of them favorable), but Manka was my
favorite. My closest friends in Tanzania
called me “zaidi ya familia” – more than family. During my two years in Uswaa, I felt not only
accepted, but truly loved by these people.
Is it
possible to feel such a deep sense of contentment within my community here? Maybe with much-needed changes in the structure of our society.
4. Evening
hymns
·
Without
a doubt, the family that I was closest to during my service was that of Rev.
Okuli Nkya (who we fondly call Baba Ivan), his wife Aneth (Mama Ivan), and their
innocent-looking but mischievious tykes, Ivan, Ester, and Dorcas. The very first thing I did upon arriving to
Uroki on September 19, 2014, was pray with Pastor Okuli, and it was the last
thing I did upon leaving on July 7, 2016.
In between were so many beautiful memories of prayer services, choir
events, and diocese events where he introduced me as his first daughter. However, my favorite experiences were the
time taken each night to sing simple hymns and worship together. This family had a multitude of challenges,
but never failed to end each day with praise and thanksgiving.
I often think that if every family ended
their day in a similar way, fewer families in the world would be broken, and
fewer people alienated from modern society.
5. Chai,
chai, chai
·
In
Tanzania, chai is not so much a beverage as an institution. Impossible is not a word that I like to use,
but I truly believe it is impossible to find a Tanzanian who does not pause his
or her routine mid-morning for a hot cup of chai and andazi (fried dough). At my
school, chai and porridge time was a staple of each school day – as was beginning
the period after chai 45 minutes behind schedule. As much as I insisted on gulping my chai to
start my class on time (my students were assigned one push-up at the door for
every minute they were late to class following chai), I did see the worth in
these daily siestas. In Tanzania, relationships are more important
than the sum of efficiency, work ethic, and industry combined. While progress is slow, discussions are
paramount. While solutions are difficult
to come to, consensus is always the goal.
In
our precision-oriented, goal-focused American world, it wouldn’t hurt every
once in a while to truly listen to the ideas of one another and to come to
consensus on something. In short, chai is everything!
6. “Alipo
Bwana, yote yanawezekana”
·
This
is a Swahili hymn that translates to, “Where God is, everything is possible.” While I served as a schoolteacher during my
service, I constantly found teachers in the most unlikely places – my beloved “Babu”
on his deathbed, a girl younger than me with a baby on her breast, and a chatty
mama on the long walk to the market. My
students taught me SO many practical skills – how to scrub the dirt out of my
socks, the life-changing power of fried green bananas, and the hippest Swahili
slang. A majority of my students had overcome far greater challenges in their
few years on Earth than myself. The most
important lesson they taught me was placing one’s trust in God. One particular girl, Jenipher, comes to mind
when I think of this. She came from an
extremely loving family, but faced challenges too vast to get into here. Still, much like the biblical Job, her faith
never wavered. I could see this in her
fervent prayers, and in the passion in her voice when she poured her heart into
a hymn.
True
trust in God, or in any higher power that one might believe in, is something
that I rarely see demonstrated in my American life. I believe that a return of this unwavering trust
could truly transform society.
7. Running
hugs
·
Whenever
I arrived home, whether from a week-long trip to a training, or from a 4-minute
run to the nearby shop, my little friends – Ester and Dorcas – came running from
wherever they were to greet me with long-lasting hugs. After all, “safari ni safari” (a trip is a
trip), and coming home is a wonderful feeling.
In Tanzania, it is impossible to come home to a dark or empty house – home
is the center of society. It is where life
happens – even weddings can happen completely inside a home!
 |
Another running hug from my mini-me!
PC: Rob Neda |
Here,
where coming back to the condo means coming back to leaky faucets and
stopped-up drains rather than the people one comes home to, a daily reminder to
reverse this thinking is welcome.
8. “Utundu”
·
This
is not a world with a simple translation (Swahili is such an expressive and
emotional language that translation is HARD!).
Google translate came up with precocity, and that will work for now.
Being baby-faced, young to boot,
petite, and a woman put me at a disadvantage for gaining respect throughout my
service. However, a little bit of utundu was how I worked my magic. During the second year of my service, I
finally became tired of being muted by men.
I began to assert myself, and this is the day when change happened. I started a vital dialogue about the need for
a girls’ bathroom at our school and about the realities of dealing with
menstruation when bathroom breaks were prohibited by a grown man wielding a
tree branch. I began educating my community about the dangers of their rampant antibiotic use. I began to be respected in the village for my
knowledge of treatment of simple ailments.
And, most importantly, I demonstrated to my girls that a good woman can
have a voice and still be respected in society.
This
courage to defy the status quo is something I wish that each and every one of
us has the opportunity to do in our lives.
9.
Waiting for the daladala
·
Transportation
was another challenge of my service, and the best option was often taking the
daladala. The daladala, a minibus
outfitted to cram about 25 people in it, including a risky driver and a shady “konda”
(conductor), is a surprisingly efficient mode of transit in East Africa. In Uswaa, daladalas were available every
Tuesday and Saturday – market days. Waiting
for the daladala could be an ordeal of 45 seconds or 2 hours – it was either luck of the
draw or a statistics game too complicated for me to decode. I often started hiking, and got lucky if a
passing bus (or truck of bananas) had an extra seat (or space above the
bananas). And, I’d find that the mamas
who had told me to wait patiently with them rather than beginning the walk,
were usually on the same bus.
Often,
good things come to those who wait. We
often feel that opportunities that pass us by are the end of a road. May we all have the grace to patiently
wait.
The next daladala, the next big break, could be rolling down the
hill as we speak.
10. I
have no idea what’s going on, but I’ll go with it
·
I
saved this as the last one, because luckily, it’s still true currently. During my service, I perfected the art of
accepting strange situations. Funerals
spent wrapped head-to-toe in swaths of fabric under the blazing sun. Accepting that a child urinating on me on the
daladala was truly a “blessing.” Realizing that I was often the gossip of the
entire village. Agreeing to teach
seminars in Swahili, and subsequently making one-letter grammar errors causing
widespread eruptions of laughter. My two
years of service was an experiment in my flexibility and adaptability. It made most days exceedingly awkward, but I
learned the most from always saying, “Yes!” and expanding my skill set each
day. Many days, I fell flat on my face
with apparent failure. (One day, I
literally slipped flat on my butt in the mud in the middle of an inter-school netball
and football tournament, in which most of the village had turned out to
watch.) Still, I grew as a teacher, a
mentor, and a human being from being unafraid to try new things.
Medical school is no different - I have no idea how to assimilate the sea of facts in my head and become something that resembles a physician. Still, the only thing I can do is to go with it, knowing that I'll ease in with time.
Each
day is a new chapter. I wish that all of
us would have the courage to trust ourselves, to place our feet, and to jump
into the great unknown.
