I've been telling everyone lately that I'm overcome by two strongly opposing feelings: the first is to leave Africa immediately, and the second is to stay forever. I'm sure anyone who has ever volunteered with orphans is familiar with this feeling. One more week in Tanzania means seven more days to get malaria, to accidentally get some shower water in my eyes and find water worms crawling out of them the next day, to get robbed in our house at night, to get pickpocketed in Mwanza, to pick the wrong restaurant and wind up with food poisoning, to scrape my leg playing soccer and get AIDS from a stranger... the list goes on. I'm sure my mom or girlfriend could think of at least three or four hundred more extremely threatening circumstances from which I must escape as quickly as possible.
One more week here also means seven more days to build relationships and with kids I've learned to really love. I know some better than others, but I feel that each one is uniquely important to me, and if I could I would take them all home ( though my Dad might not appreciate this too much). My experience at the orphanage has given me a small taste of what it might be like to be a father. I look at some of the children and think how proud I am to be their mentor, and how much prouder their parents would be if they only knew what amazing human beings they had brought into the world. Even at an early age, it is easy to see how some will use their talents to succeed, while others will most likely struggle quite a bit. Each one has a different lot in life, and I hope that in some way they are all able to find happiness. I have had the privilege of sharing some time with these talented, varied, and unique personalities, and I will not soon forget them.
For this reason the final week is a mixed blessing. I can continue these relationships for seven days, but they will inevitably be severed on the eighth. There's no way around it. I'm not coming back any time soon, and remote communication with a Tanzanian orphanage is limited at best. I'll have to simply say goodbye. This is not easy when the kids ask me to sleep over every night, when they cling to me and say "you father, Ayesha mother," when I see specific emotional needs that might not be met when I am gone. I suppose it is important not to self-aggrandize too much, and to remember that I have only been here two months, and that my impact on the lives of these children has been meaningful, but minimal. They have seen many volunteers come and go, and they are tougher, sturdier, more resilient personalities than I am.Still, the feeling is something like being in a pressure cooker of energy and emotion. I feel like I'm going to burst with desire that leads me in all directions at once, and I alternately pour myself into my surroundings, and then withdraw into myself, in order to deal with this feeling. I feel very much alive, and very much engaged with the world around me, so much that I am exhausted at the end of the day. I look forward to rainy afternoons, and to time at night when I can read and listen to music by myself, but my time at the orphanage during the day is what really makes this experience so rich and so worthwhile. I'm here for the kids, and time with them is what I'll miss when I go.
3/9/09
I've had many bittersweet experiences in life: graduations, partings with close friends, final moments in each era of my life. But never have I felt the urgency I feel now, both to leave Buswelu immediately and to stay forever. Perhaps I can attribute this to my continued use of Lariam, -- a drug which isn't even legal in many parts of the world because, while somewhat effective in preventing malaria, it also succeeds in driving people out of their minds. It causes anxiousness, hallucinatory dreams (both of which I have experienced) and sometimes more severe side effects on more vulnerable psyches. Apparently a former volunteer was unable to distinguish between her sleeping and waking hours, and was having frequent dreams about killing children. Clearly she had some issues of her own, but the point is that Lariam can mess you up -- but I think my feelings spring more from the sense of climax approaching.
I feel that everything I have been trying to achieve, the relationships of trust that I have built with neighbors, fellow volunteers, vendors, and especially the orphans, will soon be laid bare in the penetrating glare of my departure, exposed by the emotional freedom of the final moments with a friend. I approach this climax with a kind of dread, as well as eager anticipation, because it requires emotional vulnerability from me, and makes me feel awkward and self-conscious in my sadness at saying goodbye. I cannot feel quite as happy-go-lucky in my day to day interactions because I feel that I must pack them as full as possible with energy and love for these little friends of mine who will disappear from my life in a week. This sense of urgency, combined with the urgency of having only a few more days to survive Africa's trials, makes me generally anxious, even without the Lariam to exacerbate things.The kids are feeling this sense of urgency as strongly as I am, and they are clinging to me all the more tenaciously because of it. I have to fend them off, often physically, just to get some time alone with my students. I'll be playing soccer with a couple of older guys and a little girl will run up and show me a drawing she made. I'll be drinking some orphanage chai and a kid will jump onto my back, nearly scalding himslelf and strangling me before I even know what's happening. Even among the little ones, who I suspect don't really understand that I'm leaving, there's some kind of current that runs through their collective unconscious, telling them to sap every last bit of energy, every last pencil and piece of paper, every last hug, dizzying spin, and shoulder ride from my fading self.
Well if I sounded a bit harrowed in that last entry, it might be because I had malaria at the time, which I found out a day or two later. I took a friend to the clinic to see if she had malaria, and made friends with the German and Austrian interns who were working there. They took an interest in the orphanage, and I invited them over to see the place and to play some soccer the next day. A game with 3 mzungus! What could be more novel? We had a blast, and when I walked the doctors-to-be home a mile or so across Buswelu, they managed to convince me to come inside for some pizza, cards, and beer. They all sat smoking cigarettes, which I found amusing given their profession, and served me pineapple while explaining an Austrian variation on rummy. I stayed out later than I should have and worried my housemates, but generally had a great evening.
The next morning some of the kids at the orphanage were very sick, so we decided to take them to the clinic. By the time I got there I was feeling pretty tired and had a bit of a headache, but I attributed this to my mile-long walk in the African sun with the 60 pound dead weight of a malaria-filled Julius on my shoulders. In the four hour ordeal that generally characterizes Tanzanian hospitals we discovered that each of the kids had malaria, pneumonia, a respiratory infection or some combination of these problems. I decided to get tested myself, since I was scheduled to leave the country in a few days, just because my intern friends had suggested it, and lo and behold, two rings showed up in my blood sample. How could this be? I was playing soccer just last night? All I could do was laugh incredulously, and feel kind of tough about having two rings without knowing it, while simultaneously feeling quite weak and afraid at the idea of little parasites climbing around in my veins. I had entered the ranks of malaria-inflicted volunteers, and I didn't even see it coming. At least now I could join the facebook group (oh yes, there is one).So anyway, now I'm in Dar Es Salaam, where I'll be checked again to make sure the parasite is dying off. I'm not feeling sick in the least, despite a couple of marathon days to finish off my experience in Buswelu, but I want to take all the precautions I can. I have some medicine for emergency self-treatment if such a thing should be necessary, but that seems highly unlikely considering that I've had nothing even slightly resembling a fever. If there is a problem, I'll just have to deal with it in Spain, where, according to my intern friends, the hospitals are good, but not used to malaria. Fortunately I have four interns on call at all times for advice, and when I went to the clinic on my last day in Buswelu they came outside to give me some answers to my questions so I wouldn't have to wait in line. I think I'll be fine, but I'm going to be careful as well.
3-25-09
I don´t know where the backslash is on the Spanish keyboard. In a swirl of reverse culture and shock and awe at the convenience and efficiency of everyday affairs in Europe, I have indeed changed continents once more, and am reunited with Ayesha for a couple of weeks. We´ve been to Madrid and Lisbon, and we are currently in Barcelona, about to see if the night life is all it´s cracked up to be. I miss Africa, but over the last week I´ve learned to accept the fact that I´m in a place with potable water, where drivers wave pedestrians on even when they don´t have to. Beautiful, expensive things abound here, and I can´t imagine what the kids would think if they could see it all. Sometime I´ll write about my goodbye to the orphanage, but right now I´ll leave the story safe on the paper of my journal, where I wrote it down the old-fashioned way while I was waiting for Ayesha in Madrid airport. Suffice it to say that it was heartbreaking, and extremely difficult not to promise to come back, but I managed to leave without tying myself into anything permanent, or adopting any kids spontaneously. The internet is startlingly fast here, so if you want to email me or Ayesha we will have no excuse for not responding.
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