Written Wednesday, March 30th 2011
That about describes my mood for the past few days. I’ve been kind of sick with a general malaise, but it’s hard to say exactly what it is. It could be any number of things really, and at this point I’m not really interested in diagnosing so much as getting over it. It’s not even being sick that I care about, actually. I can get over symptomatic discomfort, but it’s just mentally taxing. I find myself thinking of home a lot. It’s hard not to when you’re not feeling 100%.
Once I start thinking of home, it’s so easy to let myself mentally escape elsewhere. I think about being in my own bed, not laying in a pool of my own sweat, not bloated all the time, not constantly dehydrated, not sleep deprived. I imagine that I’m enjoying a comfortable environment with food that is easy to digest and full of vitamins and iron. Once I let myself go there, it’s water under the dam and the visions just flow into my head, one right after the other. It is so easy to picture myself in this crazy, perverted, romanticized version of life in America. I see myself doing a hundred different things: going to grad school, living with my friend Jenna, hanging out with my siblings, eating ice cream at all hours of the day, working at Tribe One’s garden and doing Freedom School for a second summer, taking a road trip around the country to see my extended family, going back to work at Overlook Farm for Heifer Project International, moving to southern California, WWOOFing through France and eastern Europe… basically doing anything but being in the present. I mean, those things are neither as good as I’m imagining them to be nor entirely even possible—Why am I doing this to myself? It’s kind of like torture.
I realized after a while of this that these thoughts come so easily because I have no ties here. Everything and everyone I know and love is in America and specifically, NOT in Mali. It’s so easy to forget that this adjustment is temporary. It’s easy to forget that I WILL make Malian friends, and soon. It’s easy to forget that my language skills will improve and that I will learn to feel comfortable in this culture that feels so foreign. Integration will happen, and it will be good when it does. But I can’t rush it. I keep reminding myself not to get too far ahead of myself or compare myself to my peers. Every day I have the feeling deep in my brain that this is where I need to be right now. I’m on my way to doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing with my life, and knowing that comforts me when I get down on myself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a Peace Corps Volunteer.
you've made the correct diagnosis and said the remedy. this too shall pass. as my beloved colonel potter of mash once said," if you're not where you are,you're nowhere"as in the picture, you take the hand that's offered and keep going.i see the land around you as beautiful and the work you're about as important and meaningful. one can't ask much more in one's life. you're in our thoughts. da bronx gang.
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