Long One

This is a long one, hold on to your chucks.

For those of you that are not friends and/ or family in reality or facebook; you may have noticed a bit of a lag in the posts that are up on here. There is a pretty simple reason for this: I went home. Do not fear, I am not referencing ETing, I write this while sitting comfortably in my little house, safe and sound back in Rams, I was only state side from the 12^th-28^th. The reason I haven’t written about this before was because NO BODY KNEW! Hehehehe I’m sneaky, and I love it.

Sometime in July my cousin Alex and myself (he is equally, if not more sneaky than I) decided I should come home for Christmas and that we should not tell a soul. When, at any other point in my life, am I going to be able to shock my loved ones more than this? Some might say when I get engaged, but I don’t plan on eloping and so I would hope that the family would see it coming. You could say babies, but again, based solely on the stereotypical western order of domestic operations, people will probably deduce that one, prior to its conception...I’m punny too. So this is it, best chances to make jaws drop.

I could give you all the wonderful, tear jerking details of the surprises, but, and this will come as a blow to those of you who are aware of how much I love to publically release TMI points about my life, I want them to myself. I will contemplate posting my brother’s reaction, mostly because it is hilarious, and I will gladly share with any and all who ask privately, but what words could I actually use to give you a mental image of my parents face’s when their daughter, who has been gone for almost 9 months, is suddenly home and in their arms? You get the idea.

Being home was both everything I thought it would be and a million things I didn’t expect. I want to issue an apology to those I wasn’t able to see, or those I saw, but all too briefly. It was an insane two and a half weeks, filled with family movie nights, and restaurant lunches, and karaoke and good beer. Bon fires, desserts, snow storms and dog walks. My trip home had more meaningful conversations in it, with some of the most meaningful characters of my life, than I think any two week period of my life has had previously. It was wonderful to be home, it was relaxing and comfortable and aside from a few freak outs in large crowds (thank you John for not actually wanting to get any shopping done at the mall, Catherine for being willing to fight off the mosh pit people and Kalindi for being down to sit in quiet pubs) and general perplexity at how many different types of beef jerky there were at the gas station, there wasn’t as much culture shock as I thought there might be.

Leaving home a second time was, frankly, horrible. I don’t know why I thought it would be anything less after having gone through it once, but crying in the kitchen while clutching desperately to my two/too tall younger siblings, smooshing my face against the train window to wave to my Dad, and stoically weeping in the airport with my Mother was no easier this time around (just glad that the metro came early so I didn’t make a scene on the platform with my Aunt Martha.) This will probably be the last time I am in the United States, or North America, for the next year and a half. It was tempting to have some sort of soil collection ceremony, but to be honest, of all the natural elements I will miss the most snow would be it, and I couldn’t very well bring that on the plane.

The next big question that might be in your mind would be how I am doing adjusting back to being in Africa. I could make a long, multi-wrap necklace with the number of beads I sweat about coming back to my second home. In a desperate effort to try and ease myself into it, I spent my New Years with the wonderful Lindsay and Trevor as well as the ever fabulous Daniella. These three magnificent individuals live in Maun which means that a white person walking down the street isn’t quite the freak show that it would be anywhere else. We picnicked and cooked wonderful, delicious food and I met some amazing people. I also may have found a few more projects to stick my fingers in. I’m really happy about it and I would like to publically and very loudly love on Daniella for letting me stay in her apartment, and cooking for me, and bringing me ginger ale when I had a funky tummy. J Love you dahling, you are fabulous and there is no one I would rather watch Newsroom with, while looking up political youtube videos and eating homemade ravioli.

Finally it was time to actually go home; home to Ramokgonami, home to the clinic ladies whom I love, home to the middle of nowhere Africa that may not have a place on google maps, but has a very real place etched in my heart. I was scared, I had just spent a high intensity two and a half weeks in Michigan, I learned to love driving again, and sushi, and speaking in English; how do you go back after all of that? Was it going to be the adjustment period that I had the first time around? Was I going to call my Dad on the first night back, holding onto tears about whether or not this was a good decision?

Nope, not at all.

As coming home has always felt like, it felt like coming home. I fell in love with Ramokgonami all over again as I lugged close to 50lbs of luggage down the one mile stretch of DIRT road that I now call my own. I didn’t even flag down the 2 cars that slowed, because I wanted to take in every inch of the giant blue sky, and wave to the kids that came out of their homes to say hello. I wanted to feel the orange earth beneath my feet and really smell the place. Michigan has many smells: that pre snow smell, that only someone who was born and has lived in snow can understand, the “its-so-hot-wasn’t-it-blizzarding-like-24hrs-ago-?” smell, that indicates that the ice cream truck is only a few short weeks behind, and my favorite; the autumn time smell, that seems like a wonderful mix between bon fires, leaf piles, football and beer.

Rams has a different set of smells. Rams smells like earth; a primal, aged, vintage earth that has to bake under the sun for a few millennia before it smells the way that it does. It smells like wind, and currently (though not all the time) it smells like rain. Rain in the US smells completely different than rain in Africa. Rain in the Midwest smells like a cherry on top of a beautiful, fruitful, tasty sundae; rain in Botswana is the desperately needed sundae when you know that all you might get is vanilla and it tastes just as wonderful, if not more, all because of it. The simplicity of the olfactory sensations that you get from walking down the dirt road of Ramokgonami are matched in beauty only by the complexity of the nose tinglers in Michigan. I love you both, and I am slowly coming to love you equally.

After all of this I find myself sitting in my house, watching West Wing, sipping on a bastardized version of a james and ginger (which would be called a klipdrift and ging beer?) I didn’t feel a sense of dread getting off the kombi, and though I would love to talk with him, I’m not going to call my father sniffling over whether or not I have made a giant booboo, just the opposite is true. I will be staying in Africa for the next year and a half, I will be working as hard as I can, I will be falling short at every corner but I will be learning and growing and influencing more than I ever could at my cold home. This is my hot home now, and It’s worth the price, it’s worth the tears and it’s worth everything I can give it and so I will.

Here’s to my 1/3 service mark, may the next 2/3s not make me want to drink many 1/5ths.

Rata Thata,

Claire/ Tlotlo