Reflection

So here I am, 162 days after boarding my flight to a far away continent full of dangerous insurgents, dreadful infrastructure and desperate poverty, wishing I could be standing at the TSA line in the international terminal at JFK with my shoes off.

We talked about culture shock a lot on the trip, how hard it would be to go into the ice cream or toothpaste aisle of a grocery store without bursting into tears or wander through a mall without glaring in disgust at the amount of over-consumption that’s become an incurable virus within the “developed” world. It was odd because the first time I stepped into one of these old-but-new environments I wasn’t as angry and appalled as I wanted to be. Just a few weeks ago I was in a tiny village of Ayalaliyo trekking from mud hut to mud hut asking people questions about their crops and household roles. I should be furious at how we can live with such ease and prosperity while there are people STARVING in Africa. I have realized the past few days, as I’ve had to settle back into my San Diego life, looking desperately for a source of income, that I had an expectation of coming home and being a changed person. But when I came back, I so easily fell back into the way of life I had left behind a few months earlier, with barely a speed bump. But it’s now, after a busy visit back home, where I finally have some free time to myself that I start to really reflect on my time in Kenya and Tanzania (and South Africa). Although at first glance I don’t really feel like a changed person, other than knowing a few more words of Swahili than when I left and having some pretty cool wall decorations, I do think that I have changed. As I get farther away from the experience I find myself relating to it more and trying to grasp on to more things that remind of my time there. I have some ideas brewing in my head about how to give back to the communities there or allow me to go back, but I think those will come at the right time.

For now, I decided to put myself to a challenge to think of three major takeaways from my trip and here’s what I got…

The first conclusion that I came to is that you really need a lot less than you think you need to be happy. Granted, the campus we SFS students were staying on was the best accommodations around, aside from the lodges, but still it was a change from the norm back home. The cold showers were best if you ran or played ultimate Frisbee before jumping in. You need way less clothes than you think, I feel a little uneasy in urban outfitters nowadays. You only need about a third of a Nalgene bottle of water to brush your teeth. Using the same towel for three months without washing it is possible; I would however give it a 2-month limit if mildew weren’t something you’re a fan of. Returning home to where all these minor adjustments aren’t necessary has made me slip back into some habits of overconsumption and laziness, but I’m trying to remind myself that simplicity is good and I really don’t need any more clothes.

The second conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s extremely important to live in the moment. It’s a silly phrase people post on their Facebook walls and re-pin on Pinterest in pretty hand-lettering but I feel like during this trip I really grasped the concept and the importance of it. The statement is much easier said than put into action, as many things are, but once you are able to remove yourself from the past and stop worrying so much about future events, you’re able to free up some space to take in the present. I think I was able to do that a lot on this trip and really create great images and moments that may have not been so clear if I had been focusing on the tsi tsi fly bite from yesterday or what I’m going to be doing with my life in 8 months. Whenever I found myself worrying about home or friends or whether a snake was going to crawl into my bed, I’d kind of whisper this phrase in my head and remind myself that whatever the worry was, it would pass. I’d also use that reminder when I had my head sticking out of the green safari cars while driving through the Serengeti with the wind whipping my ponytail and the sun beating down on my light skin, surrounded by every keystone species there is in Africa because, well,  that’s a pretty awesome moment.

The last conclusion that I came to is that the spirit of Africa is unlike anything you will feel. I always say that one thing I love about the east coast is that you can feel the history and the depth to the place. I miss that out in California sometimes because everything seems so new. In Kenya and Tanzania, I really felt the presence of the past, if that makes sense (keep in mind I’m still trying to live in the moment here). There was so much life that had lived where I was living. There was pain and happiness and struggle and success. People for millions of years had walked where I was walking (especially at Oldupai Gorge- Google it). That’s special. That makes you feel special. I think that’s one of the reasons I loved it so much; everyone can belong there because we all came from there. Ernest Hemingway couldn’t have said it better when he said he was homesick for Africa before he even left the soil. When you’re there you find a piece of yourself you didn’t know was there and when you leave you miss a piece of yourself you never knew you had.