Step 1: Get over homesickness

There’s something about being surrounded by people who have known you since you were born, about spending a weekend with someone who knows you better almost anyone else, about seeing the ways in which your best friend has changed in the past 16 months that you weren’t there to witness, that makes it hard to come back.

And, as I broke down to one of my best friends here the second night I was back in the country, I wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by those people once more.

When we had made it past the initial outburst, she told me something that her friend had told her: In relationships (all kinds) what makes them work is what you are able to bring to them. Many people look for people to make them feel complete, but what really matters is that you felt whole beforehand. You are nothing if you aren’t able to define yourself outside of your relation to others.  

She told me, that above anything in my life thus far, this experience is going to be what I am able to bring to the table.

These 16 months have been hard and complicated and sometimes made me a person that I never wanted to be, but it has shaped me and made me stronger and taught me more about myself than any other experience I have ever faced.

I have walked away from classes cursing in English under my breath. I have mastered a transportation system that seems to lack all sense of logic. I have convinced a 14-year-old girl that she was capable of asking for more than what life had initially given her.

I left a significant portion of myself at Gate 58 in Kansas City, but I have things here left to do, people left here to teach and parts of me that I have yet to discover before I can truly have an experience to bring to my relationships afterward.

I only ask that those I left behind wait another 11 months. 

On entering the US for the first time in 15 months

First person I told I hadn’t been home in 15 months: The man who had just sat next to me for 8 hours and 52 minutes on the flight from Paris to Minneapolis

First person I texted: My roommate from college while still on the plane at the gate in Minneapolis

First realization about life here versus Benin: I can understand what everyone says and people can understand everything I say (i.e. when I’m mumbling to myself about what people around me are doing)

First time I wanted to text a Peace Corps volunteer and couldn’t: When I had the realization that I didn’t have to be so aggressive while standing in line at US customs because cutting in line is not socially acceptable here

First thing I bought: Pumpkin white chocolate mocha with skim milk, no whip from the Caribou coffee next to my gate in the Minneapolis airport

First time I was concerned I would cry when I landed in my hometown: Drink service on the flight from Minneapolis to KC

First face I recognized at the KC airport:  My mom

Tell the world that...

I had a blog topic ready to go; I really did. I’ve been back in village for a day; I mean really back in village. None of this spending a day readjusting by watching episodes of The Wire. 

But then my plans changed and suddenly, I’m leaving my village in less than 24 hours to start my 3-day journey back to the US for a two-week vacation.  And the only words that were left make me think of a Diddy chorus:

…I’m coming home.

I am no longer a Peace Corps volunteer.

Due to a non-serious issue (stitches) I have become a permanent fixture of the medical unit here at our office in Cotonou for the past eight days and will be for the next five. 

I have been living in air conditioning. I have had access to high-speed internet. I have eaten Honey Nut Cheerios with cold milk for breakfast everyday. I have passed the afternoons watching The Hills on DVD. I have spent my evenings speaking English with people who work at the embassy. Today, I reclaimed the ability to sleep past noon.

We say that coming to Cotonou is almost like being back in America. As the largest city in the country, it is also the wealthiest and cleanest and the place where you are most likely to find Ben & Jerry’s. There are people who live in Cotonou and have never left. Never taken that trek up the highway where the country becomes poorer and poorer in front of your eyes. 

I’m not going to say that I’m not enjoying this mini-vacation. But this, along with my two weeks of vacation in the United States in one week, makes me afraid that I’ll forget how to do things like sleep in 90 degree heat, pull water from a well and feel bad about not leaving my house until 5 p.m. And that I will have forgotten the real reasons why I’m here.

Thoughts from places: South African safari campfire

It was about three days into my vacation in South Africa that I realized how much I had needed this vacation. I was sipping red wine (from a bottle not a box) and talking to other guests at our safari lodge when I realized that this was the most comfortable I had felt in a long time.

I love Benin. I love the path that I have chosen to walk for the next 15 months. And really, I don’t want to be working anywhere else right now. But that doesn’t mean that path is easy all the time.

What I realized that night while I spoke in a language where I didn’t have to stop to think about any words before I said them, where I didn’t feel like I was a substitute for television for any kids, where I didn’t have to worry about anyone asking my for money was that I had not failed. My overwhelming need need to get out of the place that I’ve called home for the past year did not mean that I wasn’t integrated into my community, that I wasn’t good at what I’m doing, that I had chosen the wrong path.  It simply meant that I needed a break.

I realized that night that the person I was in South Africa was different than the person I had been in Benin for the last three months. And I liked the former much better. 

I realized that I had needed these 10 days off in order to allow that person to still be there when I walked off the plane in Cotonou the next Sunday.