Here are the top ten things I learned while living in Africa:
1. The things you take for granted, someone
else is praying for. Let’s get the most obvious thing out of the way. Africa made me grateful.
There are struggles that generations upon
generations of our ancestors dealt with at one time that many of us First
Worlders now do not even think about most days.
I have clean water miraculously come out of a spout in my kitchen. I flush the toilet and never have to see the
contents of it again. I can call 911 and people will actually come; paramedics... firefighters... police... A system is in place and people will actually come when I need help. My First-World doctor will most likely not turn out to be a veterinarian. I open the refrigerator and assume the electricity has
been on all night to keep things cold. Said
refrigerator usually has food in it; and when it doesn’t, I can resource more
of it independent of how well the weather treated local crops during the
growing season.
I am grateful for the comforts I grew up not
knowing were comforts. Until the day I die I hope I always look at my bed as I
have every night since moving to Africa.
I do not sleep on the ground; I do not sleep on bubble wrap, or
cardboard, or a piece of wood. I
remember back to when my gardener asked me for my moving boxes so he could sell
them to people for beds and I think, “Dang. I’m lucky.”
2. It’s a very
very small world. I thought I
knew this lesson, but apparently I didn’t know it well enough. I grew up in a
teeny tiny town in the middle of Iowa. I was blown away by the fact that every
time I walked through Times Square I ran into someone I knew. “It’s a small
world,” I would say. When we moved to
Africa and met coworker Jon, it took us literally two minutes to realize we had
both grown up within a fifteen mile radius of one another. “It’s a very small world,” I had said. But it was on the day I saw a re-sold
tee-shirt from my high school being worn by a native African on my street that
I truly knew. It’s a very, very small
world.
3. Luxury is having a thermostat. This may just be the most intelligent thing I
ever say so please take note. Luxury is having a thermostat. My ability to manipulate my surroundings in
the First World is. Un. Real.
4. You
only learn as much as you want to. *I
started to realize it when I moved to NYC and was amazed that instead of
finding worldly-aware citizens, I found people who could tell me ten ways to
get to Times Square but could not find the state of Iowa on a map. *I started
to realize it when I moved to NYC and found worldly-aware citizens that could
discuss the implications of an MFN trade status with China and the effects of trade
embargoes on small villages in rural Cuba, but did not know how to buy a subway
pass. *It clicked entirely when I moved
abroad and was amazed that instead of finding locally-aware Zimbabweans, I
found people who did not know the pangolin -one of the most sought-after animals
in their country- even existed, but knew Snooki’s catch-phrases from MTV’s
Jersey Shore. *It clicked entirely when I
moved to Africa and found locally-aware Zimbabweans that could discuss the tragedies
of the monetary incongruities of white-African versus black-African
farm-ownership in Zim, but did not know that the n-word or k-word is not an
acceptable term to most English-speaking people.
I found the same tendencies in people
wherever I went. A person can choose what they care about and
what is relevant to know in order to navigate daily life. Getting outside your walls (literally, in the
case of walled-Africa) and choosing to learn about the diversity of culture
found in your own hometown? That is
entirely up to you.
5. Wealth
is not about how much money or possessions you own, it’s entirely about access.
This is not just a sentence; it’s a whole college class. I am American and I take a few things for
granted, feeling poor when I look at my wallet or bank account. But, if I want
to buy a car, I get a loan. If I want to
go to school, I get financial aid. If I
want to buy something, I can buy it even before I have the money, instead using
a nice little piece of plastic. I have
access to things simply because I am an American with a social security
number. If my Shona housekeeper walked
up to a bank to ask for money, she’d be turned away before she even got to
speak to someone. In Zimbabwe, you buy
nothing that you do not first have money for.
If you don’t have money, you don’t eat. Want to go to school? Save up for it first; you cannot borrow your
future. Every time I felt frustrated by
my American student-loan debt, something most Africans have no concept of, I
had to stop and remember; my thousands of dollars of debt is worth more than the
five dollars in the pocket of a Third-World citizen. It’s all about access.
6. Living
in Africa is like driving with the windows rolled down. You try to orient
yourself while challenges come at you at high speeds and your hair whips in
your face. You can feel the air, richer
than any oxygen coming out of mechanical dashboard vents, and you can smell the
earth. Sunshine sits warmly on your arms
and you feel alive, though perhaps a little disoriented and overwhelmed and nostalgic for the unnameable. Life
is raw and real, out in the open. You
will leave refreshed. But you will look
like a mess.
7. The
1950s are alive and well. We first noticed it on the rusty metal pipes that
made-up most of Zimbabwe’s playgrounds.
We saw it in the backseats full of bouncing children playing with
lighters but sans car seats. We saw it in the 30 year-old medical books our vet-doctor
referenced in place of a computer. We saw it in rusty vehicles held together
with tape and prayers. We saw it in the gross treatment of staff, as though it
was the mid-century American South. We
saw it in kids drinking out of hoses and sunburns welcomed on blistered white children
who had never worn sunscreen in their lives. We saw it in the use of non-politically
correct words that made our ears blush, and crank cash-registers that made our
child’s eyes light-up. We saw it in the
motor-oil used to finger-print us at the police station, and in the misplaced
paper files that delayed our many governmental registrations. Just because
people know about technological/societal changes does not mean they want to
embrace it, or have access to do so. It’s
awesome to talk to a Zimbabwean about “the good old days” –and most people do
love that subject- and to realize that the generations I am speaking to in many
instances are decades behind our American concepts of “the good old days.” Not
everybody got the car or the computer at the same time.
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9. Write
your love letters to home. Nothing
will make you feel more like a part of something than when you are separated
from it. I never felt so American as when I moved out of its borders. I adored countless things about my African
days. I could gush for weeks. But I
surprisingly discovered –sitting in the differences- what it is I love about
home. Absence makes the heart grow
fonder. And perhaps a little more
grateful, too.
10. You can’t go back. The bright shining continent of Africa will
live with me forever, whether I make it back or not. (And I do plan to!) As
Andy Bernard said so accurately on The Office, “I wish there was a way to know
you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” We are always in the good old days. We’re in
them right now. But the tragedy about trying to go back to a place you love is
not just a question of geography. It’s
about who was there, when, and how, and why.
My baby grew up in Zim, he ran barefoot climbing mango trees and
giggling as we chased giraffes in our jeep and caught frogs in our pool. We
felt the spray of Vic Falls and the dry heat of Mana Pools. We basked on the Zambezi and cuddled orphan
babies we eventually cried about putting down. The ways I got to experience the Great
Continent That Could were a gift I will return to a thousand times… but only in
my mind.
