6 Months

Almost exactly 6 months from today, I will be getting on a plane to leave Tanzania for furlough.

Suddenly, it's becoming real. It's crazy.

Just a few months ago I finally felt settled here in Musoma – more settled than I’d felt in years. I couldn’t imagine leaving this place even for a few months.    

And now I'm ready to hop on a jet plane and fly to the States.

Why the change? Well, to be honest, I’m tired. It's been an insane couple of weeks. Life in Musoma just tends to be… hard. Harder than Dar, despite the lack of suffocating humidity and heat.

Transition does crazy things to people.

And sometimes, the dream of America - of a “better life” - doesn't only resonate with potential immigrants but also with those of us who were born and lived there, who look back as the Israelites did and long for what must have been better, because what's known is always easier and because hindsight tends to extinguish the hard and bring everything into a rosy light. And pre-made food, lesser issues with landladies, consistent power and water and easy healthcare... all sound pretty tempting.

As furlough travel and plans have become more real the past two weeks, and the excitement that’s tagged along with it, I’ve been blessed to be able to process my thoughts with a number of good friends along the way. I've been overly excited and ready to jump on a plane NOW, not in six months, and to throw away the gift of the present. Somehow I had to gain some perspective, get some of this excitement for furlough out of the way, out of my mouth, out of the fog clouding my perspective so I could still see what was right in front of me. Amazing families I get to teach and support. Love on, and be loved by. People I know I can call in the middle of the night if needed and they’ll be here in an instant. A community unlike anything I’m bound to find in the States, that’s been pulled and yanked and tied together by shared water shortages and power outages and sicknesses and being the clear minority and shared ridiculous trips on buses to Nairobi and pleas for people in Nairobi to bring x y and z that was stolen or meds that are needed. A truly beautiful place I call home. Red dirt roads, Lake Victorian waves crashing out the back door of our school. People I love and am going to miss terribly – heart-wrenchingly difficult see-ya-laters, this amazing community that comes around me more than I deserve, a Bible Study group where the difficulties brought up are real and the people even more so. I knew this, but somehow, ideas of the States – of pre-made foods, family, dear friends I haven’t seen in ages – they overshadowed the here and now.

Finally, thanks to lots of good talks with even better friends, I’m coming out of the chaos of longing for the States. Or at least far enough out of it to refocus on the here and now.

I’m sure I’ll continue to long for favorite foods and persons and for a library where I can sit and read without being stared at, and coffee shops, and Panera even if I’ll be listening to lectures while I’m there. I’m sure that as I watch the FaceBook posts of snow I’ll imagine outside my window there’s a world of white, instead of green.

But I also know that when I’m in a world of white, I’ll long for the green and for fresh bananas from my yard and purple avocados the size of both my fists and coconut milk made from the real thing cracked in our kitchen, purchased for 30 cents. The food we sat around longing after in Musoma won’t taste as good as I imagined, and I’ll end up getting sick of the flu and bronchitis instead of amoebas.

Let's face it. I'll never be happy with what I have or where I am unless I actively choose it. It’s all about perspective. So as I write this, gathering the best of both my worlds together in a single page, I realize just how blessed I am to have two fabulous worlds of friends and experiences that sometimes even get to collide in this crazy journey called life.