There and back again

I survived my first complete year of teaching in Namibia.  Maybe with a few scratches and bruises, but none the worse for wear. The 2014 school year wrapped up in late November (a few weeks early due to the Presidential Election on November 28), and a new year began on January 12^th.  Teaching is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s tough to beat those long breaks (which are necessary, in my opinion, to maintain sanity).

End of year celebration of Students of the Month at Spur with milkshakes and burgers

Students of the Month party at Spur

Everyone's happy on the last day of school!

Aaron & I had the great privilege to travel back home to the US over the school holiday.  We have been out of the country for about a year & a half, and I was honestly nervous about going home.  As the philosopher Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”   I’m not sure what that river looked like now, and I also wondered who I now was.

Buying gifts for friends and fam back home

London layover selfie:  It looked, smelled and felt like Christmas finally!

The contrast of cultures was immediately evident after alighting from the plane in Atlanta.  (Side note: quite an anticlimactic homecoming, as we were meeting our family a few hours later in Asheville, and wouldn’t even be back in Texas until the following week). But hearing the American accent and phrases like, “you’re in the wrong line if you’re not a Falcons fan!” while lining up to go through immigration told me that we were back on American soil. It’s the very subtle things that you realize were different: how Americans make eye contact and smile at strangers, being allowed more personal space, people waiting patiently in organized lines, the loudness of an average public conversation between two people. 

It’s true that travelling and living abroad give you new perspectives on the world that you knew before.

We spent a rich 4 weeks in the US with our family and friends.  We laughed, we celebrated, we shared good conversation. Life in Namibia is so strikingly different from life in Austin, but I felt as though we slipped seamlessly right back into life as we knew it before.  Maybe it’s muscle memory?  I was certainly surprised that I was completely comfortable driving on the right side of the road after traveling on the left hand side for the past 18 months! 

However, I’m not sure that a short trip is indicative of how life will be when we permanently move back.  We didn’t have any stress over finding a job, paying bills, or signing up for health insurance.  Those fun things will be waiting for us later.  Also, I’m not sure that we will even know just how much our Peace Corps experience has impacted us until we have some distance from it.  It was just a quick, soul nourishing time of being in the presence of those whom we love, and who love us.

Leaving America, I was now nervous to come back to Namibia.  Was I going to have to adjust all over again to all the differences? 

The season changed from winter to summer as our plane crossed the Atlantic, and plunged back down into the Southern Hemisphere.  We landed again in Windhoek, this time not as eager, nervous, ignorant Peace Corps trainees, but now as seasoned volunteers. The sweaty heat of the airport was no surprise.  The argument of two men over who was supposed to take us to our hostel was oh so familiar.  We were home again.

But, the sky.  The black, night sky.  The sky, littered with bright stars and the splendor of the Milky Way’s subtle glow, unadulterated by any street lights as we drove away from the airport.  This is what struck me the hardest.  This was the magnificent beauty that I missed in America.

Taking our dog for evening walks

Maybe that is a quadruple rainbow behind me?

Settling back into Namibian life here has been easy.  My eyes have refreshed; my perspective, renewed.  The clock of our service is ticking--we only have 5 more months left.  Being back in the States has reminded me of all the precious things that life here has to offer us, and I don’t want to take any of it for granted.  There are still hard, hard days.  But I know that we will never have this exact opportunity again, and those challenges get washed away in the light of all the good and beauty around us.  So, I guess, we’ll keep going…