The Transition Artist

I’ve been meaning for some time to write a post to wrap up my trip. I’ve been back in the states for about a week now, and it’s totally surreal. It’s weird how quickly I was able to shift back into life here. I’m now working on going through this process of figuring out how everything I learned and did in Africa will fit into my life here, and it’s been interesting and somewhat challenging.

When I first got home I absolutely couldn’t stop thinking about Africa. My time there ended, but life there didn’t. I kept finding myself checking the clock, thinking about what I’m doing in this moment, and realizing that 8 hours ahead my two sisters are probably at home, sitting with Babu, maybe eating a meal or pulling laundry off the line. I would picture my host parents taking a matatu home in the Nairobi traffic. I wondered if the neighbors chickens were still roaming around in the yard, eating all the little plants in the garden, or if my host family “accidentally” ate the rooster for dinner, like we had jokingly said we would if the neighbors didn’t keep it out of our yard.

After wondering about these things for a while, I realized sadly that I wasn’t a part of that anymore. I tell story after story recounting my experiences on a daily basis, but none of them give an accurate picture of what my trip was like. I quite literally can’t possibly sum up everything I did, saw, and lived in any number of stories or blog posts or thoughts. Day in and day out, I became familiarized with a totally different way of living, and now I’ve returned to the way I lived before, but I can’t possibly see it the same way. I find myself continually comparing things to Africa. I keep saying things like, “When we made dinner it would take us about two hours over the coal stove,” or “The kids used to do that!,” or When we had to wash the dishes we would heat water over the stove, put it in buckets, and clean for about an hour and a half!” The thing I find myself saying the most, though, is, “Things are just so much easier here!” 

Granted, I didn’t live in Africa for long. I was only there for a month, but in that short time, I got accustomed to doing life the way they do life in Kibera and Ethiopia. Of course I was experiencing culture shock and comparing my culture and their culture even as I was doing all these different things, but a funny thing happens when you’re the only person from your own culture. I noted what was normal for the people around me and just went with it. I began to stop mentioning or questioning so frequently if I would do whatever I was doing in Africa back home in America, because it didn’t make sense to keep doing that. Now that I’m back, though, I want to do the opposite. I want to question everything I do, and remember how very different my life looked a week ago, just so that I can think to myself, “This is nothing. I have no problem doing that at all. This is easy.” And on top of that, I realize how very much I have to be grateful for.

Gratefulness is a really hard thing to come by. It’s hard to come by when you feel like you’re stripped of what makes you comfortable and happy, but it’s even harder when you have everything handed to you without any effort involved. To be honest, my first week in Kenya was hard. It was one of the most challenging things I think I’ve ever done, simply because I was doing it alone and had no one else from my culture there, in it, and with me to talk about everything I was experiencing. Sure, I could blog or call home, but it wasn’t the same. If there’s anything this trip taught me, it’s that I’m an extremely relational person. I like to be alone plenty, but I love people even more. Starting completely from scratch on relationships and figuring out how to relate to, joke with (teasing is one of my forms of affection), love on, and make conversation with people that had an entirely different upbringing and worldview that I have was a whole different ball game for me. It was the most awesome thing I’ve ever done, but totally intimidating at first. This all to say that when I first got to Kenya, I was so out of my element that I quite literally wondered why I had ever assumed it would be “fun” because all of a sudden I had to figure out how to live with strangers, be really open to all kinds of new food, bathe in about four inches of water, and just be myself around anyone and everyone (because it turns out I get really awkward when I try to crowd please).

Honest truth: I wanted to arrive and report to everyone immediately that, “Hey guys! All is well here! Hakuna matata! Kenya is everything I ever dreamed it would be!” And do you know why? Because I’ve read stories about Africa. I knew the drill. I’ve read the books and blogs and talked to those Africa goers: you get there, locals are friendly and culture is eye-opening and awesome, you buy some cool stuff, take lots of pictures with little African kids, and then come home with cool souvenirs and a “this changed my life” schpeal. I don’t know that I’ve met anyone who’s been to Africa who hasn’t checked those boxes.. But I’m sitting in my bed on day three exhausted out of my mind because I’ve been trying so very hard to pretend I’m totally comfortable and in my element, when that wasn’t exactly the case, and I quite literally thought to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?” I can tell you right now that those thoughts continued to come in and out, but by the end of my trip I stopped wondering what I had gotten myself into and started feeling consistently grateful to be there.

When I started to feel a little overwhelmed, charged with emotion over feeling a little like an outsider, constantly treading water in the deep end of the pool, I had a conversation with my mom about how I wanted my experience to be. She gave me the most important advice of the trip. She told me to keep a gratefulness journal, in which I should write down every morning and evening what I was grateful for at that moment. So I tried it the next morning. And again that same evening. And then many times after that, until all of a sudden I found that I had used up about half my journal just writing about what I was grateful for. The journal was totally unconventionally filled. The pages are lined with bulleted lists and prayers and some of what I call my love letters to God, thanking Him for making life messy and hard and challenging, not only for me but for the people I was surrounded by, because every sweet thing I experienced felt like the sweetest thing in the world. Every precious story I was told, each hand that I held, every afternoon I spent with the kids, and fun, chatty nights with my sisters felt like the most wonderful gifts I had ever been given. A banana or a passion fruit was an absolute pleasure. A bath in four inches of water, using my dirty underwear as a wash cloth, was the most lovely cleansing experience. And I learned not to be embarrassed to dance around the whole house, call acquaintances my best friends, or gain lots of weight (which I did, but was told I was made “more smart” (i.e. beautiful) by it).

Now imagine me living and breathing all of these things, coming to love the way I felt about them, and then coming back to the United States and having everything feel absolutely effortless. We have dish washers and running water. I have friends I’ve spent a long time building relationships with. I have a car. There is an entire refrigerator and pantry full of food in my house at this very minute, and I can walk into the kitchen and eat anything I want. The list could go on forever! I have so much, and it’s so easy, but it’s also easy to forget to be thankful for it all. It’s so easy to forget that people don’t have the kinds of luxuries I have available, and even easier to take them for granted. I could make a long list of things that I’m grateful for here, but it’s so easy I don’t even bother. I have to make a concerted effort to pray and remind myself each day to be grateful, and that’s where Africa doesn’t end for me. I will carry Africa around on my heart and in my mind every day that I live if I can, if only to remember what true gratefulness feels like. 

I’ve worked for the company that sent me on this trip for about a year now. Before this trip was ever even a twinkle in my eye, I had helped promote and send out merch for a campaign by the Mocha Club (when I was interning with that side of African Leadership) called “I Need Africa.” The general message was, “I need Africa more than Africa needs me.” And it’s the most true statement I’ve ever heard in my life. Africa doesn’t need my help in school or my ideas on how they should live, but I need Africa. I need Africa so I can be grateful each and every day, and remember that there’s no such thing as too much love. So is my trip over? Yes. Are my thoughts, love, and absolute fervor for that continent? Absolutely not. Africa didn’t end when I stepped off the plane. I’ll carry it with me as long as I live.