A brief reflection into the past 10 months:
Sometimes this life is hard. A lifestyle I’m not used to suddenly became my norm and I had to find comfort and happiness within it. At first, it broke me. It tore me down until I felt stripped of everything that once made me happy, that identified me. Not only did I see darkness, I felt it. But greatness can be found within any struggle and the only way to truly understand the high, is to experience the extreme low. The struggle forces the escape. The escape opens up the opportunity to engage, to wonder, to seek, to truly see and not only experience, but live. Eventually, I found that escape. With open eyes and an open heart, I could embrace. I began to love the things that identified my every day; the sounds of the pied crows in the early morning hours, the walk to the tuck shop where I bought my eggs and coke, and the fruit stands that lined the side of the road and the bananas I’d buy from them for nearly nothing. I embraced my love for a game, a game that undoubtedly shaped me into the woman I am today, with those who see it as a way of life. I could eventually accept the slow pace of African life and could accept the fact that yes, more times than not, this pace would drive me absolutely mad.
An excerpt from my journal on one particularly slow day….. “So much time. Endless amounts of time. Time to think. My mind seems to pull in every direction with thoughts that I can’t seem to make clear. One thought turns into ten and I seem to lose where one thought began and where the other ends. Sometimes too much time isn’t a good thing, though people like to tell me it is. They say it’s hard to come by. I don’t like free time. I like freedom. But free time doesn’t feel like freedom. Not here. It feels like prison. Where does excitement meet free time? It doesn’t and it never will. Free time is boring and it haunts. At least, that’s how I feel right now.”
I loved the sun when it was shining, perhaps not the heat that came along with it, and the long thunders that accompanied the rains during the rainy season. I began to love everything that set Zambia apart from the rest of the world; the brightly colored and lively patterned chitenges that seemed to identify the woman, the kindness of a stranger, the smokey and dusty air, the chaotic markets, the terrible directions, the simple sayings, the love for braais, the integration of everyone in a place no matter their level on the socioeconomic scale, and sometimes I even loved being called a mzungu. I grew to love the fact that I could feel so out of place yet in place at the same time. I appreciate a simple life and have discovered how unnecessary some necessities truly are. I think there is a love for this culture somewhere inside of me, though it may be difficult to unveil at first. Perhaps that love is rooted in the fact that this culture is just as beautiful and fruitful to those who live it as my culture is to me.
There are days when I still retreat to that all too familiar dark and dreary place. Where the strangeness of my here and now makes me long for the comfort and familiarity of my home, my family and my friends. This darkness though has given me the opportunity to rise up, the courage to face the challenge, to learn from it and to grow stronger. That, I am truly thankful for.