I feel as if I’m traveling between two worlds. Caught in a force field where time has stopped for the next few hours as I travel between the two. Maybe that sounds like the start to a sci-fi novel, but it really is how I feel and if you think about it what it’s like to travel on a plane.
Leaving a place, a time, a space behind and going to an entirely new one. Except this time I know where I’ve been and I know where I’m going and they are in many ways worlds apart.
I just spent the past three weeks visiting home for the first in 11 months. I’ve been to Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, and The Gambia in that time. The difference with leaving 11 months and 3 weeks ago is that the first time I did not know where I was going, what I was getting into.
I left full of excitement and wonder and yes, I was nervous too. I was setting off to put my years of education to the test and to start my dream living and working overseas in the nonprofit sector.
I leave now, not quite as excited, not wondering about where I’ll stay, what I’ll be doing, eating, seeing, smelling, because I already know. Nervous? Yes. Even more so. Because this time I fully realize what I’m leaving behind and what I’m getting into. I’m aware that I have a chance to actually make the most of my time, to make a real difference. I’m juiced up, ready to go, have had my R&R, which so many here do not get. Many people asked me what I do in my free time (in Basse, The Gambia). When I said not much, I meant it. My most enjoyable evenings are those spent dancing in the street just for fun or in a compound with my close friends who I like to call my Gambian famiy. It’s the times walking home at night on the sandy road in the pitch black when the power’s out and looking up at an amazing sky full of stars and seeing the milky way. It’s coming home to a house that has electricity and sitting in front of my fan to cool off, not having to take a bucket bath by candlelight.
R&R at home the past three weeks- dancing in a club with a great sound system that I drove to in my own car. My enjoyable evenings were spent with friends and family, at a happy hour with delicious food and drinks or in the comfort of my home with electricity, heat, carpet, and couches. My hard decisions were what should I eat for breakfast today and which shirt do I want to buy to bring back with me? Spending $20 to $40 a day like it’s nothing… 800 to 1,600 Gambian dalasi’s, money that would take me a few days even a week to spend in Basse, The Gambia.
The hard part wasn’t coming home. Home felt normal. You slip right back into the shoes you’ve known your entire life.
The hard part was leaving. And I’m still struggling and trying to figure it out.
Maybe-- I was just so excited to be home-- that I forgot about the world I was leaving behind. Now that I’m going back and missing so much those I just left I’m more conscious of the contrast that lies between them.
I’m going back to a place I’m not sure that I like, a place that’s challenging and does not have a lot of comfort. It’s a place where I’m growing, learning, and struggling, a place that has many people I hold dear to my heart. Many people who I’m excited to see. But how do I tell them of my three weeks at home, my three weeks of luxury?
It’s that question that makes going back so much more difficult- to be awakened to my privilege.
To know that yes I am going back with an entire suitcase full of gifts for friends, but I am also going back with an entire suitcase full of food to last for days and an almost entirely new wardrobe. I’m going back with gadgets and toys, things I’ll be able to use when I come home at night to escape the world I live in, to escape poverty, to get some R & R. That’s an escape that I’m privileged to have, a privilege I’m still figuring out how to reconcile with.
It’s a privilege many people have where I come from, but not something that one has to be conscious of or struggle with if they don’t want to. It’s a struggle I don’t know how to turn off, something that I’m faced with everyday. It constantly makes me wonder why the world is the way it is, how did it get this way, will it ever be different, more “equal” and most importantly, what impact can I have in it? How can I make the world a better place?
One person can have a major impact, yes, but to be that Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Mother Teresa or Gandhi seems likes a one in a million chance, just as “saving the world” does.
There’s an African saying that what one person can do two can do better. Imagine if the entire world would consciously struggle the way I am with the ways things are. If they all could not rest until something changed. I do not have the answer and my way of living and reconciling is not something everyone can do or a way that will drastically change the world. I am but one ripple and I understand that that ripple makes a difference, that my life has meaning. But, I’m human. I want more. I want a wave, a crash that will forever change the way the water once stood. I want a revolution, an end to war, an eradication of disease. I want utopia and knowledge; to discover worlds beyond our own and understand the universe.
I do not know how to get what I want, how to achieve these things. All I know is that to answer them, to try the only way I know how is to go through my struggle. To finish out my year contract (up in June 2015) and hope that my experience and the knowledge I’ve gained will lead me to the next step, whatever that may be.
And so I will shut off my privileged Macbook Air laptop and deal with my current struggle of trying to sleep on an airplane, most likely not to go well followed by a layover and another sleepy airplane struggle only to awake and walk into the other world.
