Cause to Pause: The Reality of Africa

Here we are.  One year in Africa today.  It's cause to pause and reflect on what we've learned in our now-not-so-new continent.  And one thing has been on my mind lately.

--But before I start spilling my latest thoughts, I must add a disclaimer... because every time I write anything (I hope to be) introspective on this blog, I have a few friends who immediately contact me and say, "Are you okay?  You sound sad.  Are you thinking of returning early?"  The answer is always a firm no.  Wrestling with challenges and big ideas is not at all the same as unhappiness.  We're loving this continent, all we're learning, and our continued new experiences!  Okay, let's move on to the one thing--

The shock of moving to Africa is not in experiencing how people different than myself live, the strangeness of new flora and fauna, or the awe of a new landscape.  The shock of Africa is continually the shift in reality.  As I explore the complex landscapes of African life I am confronted over and over by the relevance of things I have previously learned or paid attention to.  And the lack of relevance.

I have crossed paths with hundreds of people that will never know what it is like to travel thirty miles beyond home.  That will never understand how time-consuming Facebook can be.  That will never know what “Googling” something means, what a Kleenex is, or what chocolate tastes like. I have seen street vendors tie bricks to their baby's legs lest they crawl into the street. I have seen bricks used as produce to play store, and a public metal bench used as a chew to soothe a teething child.  I have seen a child turn a paint chip into a toy named Henry.

Until the minute we left our city home for the wilds of Chirundu, Zim, a few weeks ago, I was paying attention to things like an anticipated royal baby, a book on happiness, and my email inbox.  But as with every trip outside The Bubble, Chirundu once again reminded me of how irrelevant things I have put energy into can be at times.  It has become my struggle. And perhaps, to an extent, my fear.   

An excellent blog post I read recently, entitled What Happens When You Live Abroad, perfectly describes the tragedy of the ex-patriot.  “As you settle into your new life and country, as time passes and becomes less a question of how long you’ve been here and more one of how long you’ve been gone, you realize that life back home has gone on without you…. People have grown up, they’ve moved, they’ve married, they’ve become completely different people—and so have you…. So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people.  As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home  in either one, so you are divided in two…. You cannot be in two places at once, and from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the things you’re missing out on back ‘home.’"

My compliments to the writer, Chelsea Fagan, as this perfectly put into words my constant feeling of being pulled between my previous wonderful world of television, media, and more abstract expressions of art and philosophy with a more realistic “reality” of raw survival based only on that which I can see directly in front of me.  Putting words to these challenges is helpful, as I mourn my inability to live two lives at once. Or five. Or ten.

My fear is missing out.  Feeling left behind.  Recognizing I haven’t kept up with the things “real” Americans should know through their media barrage. Until I left the US, at least an hour + of each of my days were spent reading a book, listening to music, watching television or a movie, taking in advertisements, reading articles, searching online, etc.  In laymen's terms, spending part of my day in someone else's interpretation of reality or their imagined story-based hypotheticals.  And I loved it.  I felt connected.  Inspired. Energized. Knowledgeable.  Appreciative of others' stories and art. 

As I move away from the digital, pop-culture, imaginary world that daily flavored my past days, my surrounding reality grows.  The pieces of my life centered around re-learning how to live, how to operate, shop, drive, and speak in a new place, how to carry out every day activities like a child, have become the larger part of my daily diadem as time continues on my second continent.  These things are for better and for worse.  But they seem to have stretched me. More knowledgeable.  More aware.  Deeper into reality. Fundamentally altered.

Yet suddenly I've become uncertain of how to someday re-enter the culture from which we’ve temporarily stepped away.  As I experience new things in the realities of African life, as reality itself grows bigger and my American media world gets smaller, questions simmer. Are pieces of my previous life suddenly irrelevant?  Do they hold less meaning? More meaning?  What will happen when I don't understand the jokes being told on Late Night?  Or what a news anchor is talking about when they refer to something that happened last year?  Or who is being shown on the red carpet? What will happen when I return and don't recognize a single song on the radio? Thank God for my tiny time on facebook, or I wouldn't  know important things like the latest on Angelina Jolie's breasts.  What would happen if I returned to the US and didn't know about Angelina's breasts?  Can you imagine?!

I will never be able to play trivial pursuit again.

My literacy of American culture has surely already been changed and will continue to be the longer I am here. How will I combine suddenly feeling like two people, never quite at home in either place?

The only thing I can do is to remind myself.  Over and over. 

Two people can hold more than one. 


Related posts:
If Ever You Need Perspective
Becoming American
Geography

If Ever You Need Perspective

If ever you need to feel humbled, move to Africa. Imagine moving your entire home full of belongings into a truck for Africa and your feelings at opening all of your items among people who make 100 dollars a month at best. We found ourselves in this position last weekend, when our container finally arrived -four months late, and just in time for Christmas. I was tickled after feeling months of desperation for the things we so "terribly" needed to make home feel like home.  As our gardener's wife helped us to wash all of our kitchenware I suddenly became acutely aware of my privilege.  I felt my face burn as I had Jesca wash boxes and boxes of things like our Parmesan cheese grater, ice cream scoops, and sushi dishes, the likes of which she had never seen, let alone been able to afford.  I quickly shut the door to the rest of the house, filled with containers and Jonas' newly discovered toys strewn about.  I opened the rest of our boxes with curtains closed while I thought about Jesca's boys playing in the yard with their stitched-together grocery-bag ball and felt a large dose of humbleness in my heart.

 

If ever you need to see the humor in things, move to Africa.  Among other things Jonas and I have been looking forward to, a bike and carrier have been on the top of the list.  We typically walk about four km a day on dusty paths and shoulders of roads in mid-day African heat.  I was tickled to finally have our bikes arrive, newly purchased just for our African commute.  What I didn't expect, though, was how humored all of the local Shona would be with our bikes.  Apparently a white woman zipping around town in a bulky bicycle helmet with a giant trailer wheeling behind her, helmeted baby trapped inside, is reason to stop and smile, to sometimes point, and almost always to always yell, "Mangwanani!  I like your bike!"  I am joyously laughed at with awe so often I preemptively start laughing at myself now whenever I pass someone.

 

If ever you need to feel cynical, move to Africa. Kurt and I checked each numbered item that came off our moving truck as six men labored in long sleeve uniforms in place of ramps and dollies.  As the last piece found its way into the house, the head mover and Kurt looked at each other.  "There is a lot missing," they agreed.  We went through the lists again, having the movers unwrap every piece of furniture to make sure no package was stuck inside another.  When the movers finally left, we spent the rest of the weekend ripping open boxes at an exhaustive pace, rather than with joyful discovery, trying to recall what and how our American movers had packed, and writing down almost $40,000 worth of stolen items.  Everything from electronics to a computer to table legs to design work to the 75 Christmas ornaments Jonas and I made together last year to the ten books I had handmade for each year of our marriage landed on the list. It rarely happens, though a pair of our friends had the same situation. The items were all accounted for when we arrived in the country, but four months of visa waiting later, seals were broken and bonded storage turned out to be, well, not so bonded.  We are currently dealing with insurance claims and explaining to Jonas why he now has no tricycle or bicycle. Training wheels, yes.  Bicycle, no.  

 

If ever you need to feel gratitude, move to Africa.  I set aside some of the paper packaging and boxes from our move for Jonas.  He wanted paper to draw on and boxes to build a fort. Upon leaving, the movers asked if they could take the mountain of bubble wrap sheets that had been taken off our large furniture items.  I thanked them, saying, "absolutely," so we would not have to burn the plastic in our yard.  Our gardener pulled me aside hurriedly and whispered, "Madame, can I keep it? I can sell it. People need beds."  I had totally forgotten that many of those who are not fortunate to have mattresses here sleep on scavenged cardboard and, if they're lucky, paper and bubble wrap.  My trash was just what others had been hoping for.  My bed has washed a wave of gratitude over me each time I've walked past it this week.

 

If you ever want to feel joy for the simple things, move to Africa. I have a favorite family Jonas and I pass every day on our trek; they are squatters who live among the foundational outlines of an incomplete house two streets from us.  We shout out greetings to each other and our babies whenever we cross paths.  (When they first encountered me zipping past on our bike, the father shouted, "HA!  So much betta!  Yo bike is very clever! I see you go fast!  Ha ha ha! Go fast baby!")  They are the happiest family I've seen. The family can be seen doing their laundry in a wheel-less wheelbarrow every afternoon.  One day I passed at an atypical time and watched the mother run full speed from a water spigot to the wheelbarrow, water pouring from the bottom of a holey bucket.  She got a few cups worth into the wheelbarrow, then turned around and started back to the spigot once again.  The beautiful part?  She was laughing the whole way.

If ever you need to feel conflicted, move to Africa. The one most important thing, we were warned by the school, is to never give away from your gate.  If you make the mistake of giving from your door, people will know where to find you.  And their relatives.  And their friends.  Over and over again.  Soon it will be hard to get out of your home.  So when an elderly man came to our gate last weekend asking for money and Kurt, who like myself believes in the value of giving, lovingly said, "Sure, just a moment," into the buzzer, I jumped down his throat.  ((This is after I encountered a begging woman last week that has been returning unwelcome to our next door neighbor's gate for over ten years after she was once helped out when she needed assistance for her sick baby. I admit I heartbreakingly wished her many blessings and denied her the money I recognized she desperately needed in a tactic of self-preservation I have felt guilty about ever since.))  Kurt and I then hissed back and forth with hushed voices about what to do, as he had just led the man to believe he was going out promptly, but I recognized that it would be me trying to get him away from our gate the next time he came and Kurt was at school.  While the man waited, our sad discussion turned to conversation about how we want so desperately to answer the human condition here with a loving approach, that we want to treat all human beings as though they were God themselves, and how much we resent living in a place where the rules of how to live keep our lives safe but make us feel as though we aren't living at the same time.  No matter how we chose, the discomfort of the situation remains present.  In the end, Kurt went out to the gate.  

If ever you need to feel certain, move to Africa. People ask me all the time if I regret moving to Africa, after such a challenging last few months filled with car accidents and visa issues.  My answer is always the same.  

"Never. Look at how much I've learned."

The Day the Rains Came

Jonas and I were outside when the rains came.  Winds blew and clouds had gathered as we raced around the yard to pick up toys and move furniture inside.  As the sprinkles started, I was taken back to childhood.

I have been destined for Africa since I was a small child; my most vivid memories involve learning about this amazing continent I now get to call home.  I remember the bloated bellies of waddling Ethiopian babies on TV, and my first desire to change the world I suddenly found cruel and unfair. I remember dancing and dreaming of future journeys to Africa while the record player pumped out a crackly version of It's A Small World in my living room. And I remember afternoons with my still heroic father, cuddled on the couch with a bowl of cheese balls watching National Geographic specials about African animals on the TV.

Remembering images of dying animals desperately lying around dried watering holes on those specials made the first sprinkles joining my goosebumps on Saturday pure jubilation.  It hasn't rained since February, and though the largest animals in the neighborhood of our African city involve starving dogs and scavenger birds, I felt suddenly connected to the wildlife of Africa as I paused to feel the deluge come.

The thunderstorm was supposedly tame by African standards.  But the purge of a two hour monsoon was an answered prayer worthy of celebration. Fields are watered, wells are filled, and the burden of dryness has been lifted from the plains.  I've experienced thunderstorms hundreds of times before, but on Saturday we were part of something very special.  Rain.  Finally.

Watch our first African down-pour here:  https://picasaweb.google.com/cherijohnsondesign/20121014?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSo9bDTm8TuCA