In which I come to a realization after an interaction with a human who can not yet talk

I am terrible at keeping in touch with people.

It’s not that I haven’t met people who have changed me and shaped me and made me the person that I am today. It’s not that I haven’t met people that I wish I was still in contact with today. It’s not that I never had best friends who knew all my secrets. 

Because I have and I did.

But I’ve always wanted to be the person who leaves. I’ve always thought of the lifestyle that I lead as a transient one. The people that I surrounded myself with meant something to me while they were surrounding me, but never enough that I made the effort to keep in contact with them when they no longer were surrounding me.

And I was ok with that. I had accepted that the people I met would only be in my life for so long before they would leave again so I should learn the most from them while I still had the chance.

And then I met my nephew. 

We were in the kitchen of my brother and sister-in-law’s house. I had walked in and then suddenly, in front of me was this very small person who I had never met before, but was someone who was very important to me. And, as I watched him bang his hands on the marble countertop, I realized (and I’m borrowing from John Green here) that, as long as I am alive or as long as my nephew is alive, I will be his aunt and he will be my nephew.

There isn’t a part of the African bush remote enough where I can escape that fact. 

And that nine-month-old baby made me realize that maybe I should start thinking about the other people and other relationships that I want to foster so they will still exist long after it would have taken me to figure out how important a particular relationship meant to me in the first place. 

I realized that you have to choose to let someone be part of your life. And you have to work to keep that person part of your life. Because, maybe, leaving isn’t always the answer.

Don't I know you?

There are many times here that I find myself comparing the friends that I have made here with the friends that I left back home, like I’m trying to directly replace people from my life in the US to the people I have in my life now.

I was thinking about this this morning as I stared at the sesame plants in front of my deserted school as I waited for my director to show. Is it because I have a tendency to surround myself with the same sort of people? Is it because there are only a finite number of characteristics for people to have so of course some of those appear in the personalities of those I knew back home and those I know now? Is it because I’m trying too hard to find things here that remind me of home?

There were also a lot of good people here already.

It was today, as I sat in Martin’s house (one of our history/geography teachers) eating the best pounded yams I’ve ever eaten in my village, as I watched Martin lift his 18-month-old daughter on his legs like I used to beg my big sister/brother/dad to do when I was little, as his wife cracked a joke that caused me to laugh out loud again, as I remembered the smile that spread across Martin’s face when he walked into his backyard to find me pounding yams, as I thought about how there was not really any other person’s house I’d rather be at at that moment, that I realized something:

I was going to miss these people when I left.

Author’s typing-this-the-day-after-it-happened note: I was walking with Pierre, the other history/geography teacher today (who is also one of my favorites. There seems to be something about history/geo teachers here) when we passed Martin’s house. There was someone sitting on the front step of his neighbor’s house that could have been him, but I knew it wasn’t him when he didn’t run over to see me after I waved. He’s that kind of person.