you spend the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again
i’ve been working on this post for awhile. mostly in my head, while jotting down an idea here or there. the past six weeks have been pretty influential in my deciding what I want, professionally and personally. After this internship, I timed it so I have a month to live out of a backpack and bum around a corner of this globe. I was meant to head to SE Asia, join the other hundreds of backpackers and eat delicious, cheap Thai food, see some temples and maybe check out a few beaches. As the decision time crept up on me, I wasn’t too keen on spending another month schmoozing with strangers. Everyone I have met is in some way beautiful and interesting and humorous, but the conversations begin to sound similar: How long have you been here? Where are you from? Where do you plan to go next? Do you want to share a taxi? What do you do (fill in: professionally? for fun? when it rains?)? Do you have a book you want to swap? So, SE Asia will have to wait (maybe subconsciously it just didn’t seem right to go without you, Justin).
So! New plan! (STA student, flexible refundable tickets are so.... flexible!) I am going to leave Nairobi and go loiter in Kampala for a few days with Jonathan. I plan to ride his bike and finish whatever book I’m reading at that point. Then I will fly to Johannesburg (and leave immediately, it’s been suggested) to make my way down the coast to Cape Town. That’s all I know. I’ll find a few hostels, ride some buses and see a piece of this continent I have only heard about. Then I will arrive in Cape Town and meet Grace (and her lovely Kigali friends) and venture into the desert for Afrika’s Burning Man. Jonathan will wander up at some point and meet us as well. Assuming I come out alive and with my mental state intact, I will drive up the Garden Route with that crew in that big yellow van that is currently under construction. After that fun, music-filled, hazy adventure I plan to return to Sierra Leone. I’ll make my way back to Evan’s village and spend a glorious week there doing everything (and nothing) I did last time. That place is every idealistic idea I have of Africa and I miss it. They also give Americans a year-long, multi-entry visa and I suppose I should get my money’s worth. Oh, and there’s Evan. A pretty cool kid, whose company I enjoy immensely every time we’re able to get together. So, I figure it’s worth it to run with a good thing.
(also, because of the funding for this kenya fellowship, i got a significant amount in student loans. i may be in debt for the rest of my life, but at least i'll have some good memories, right?)
Then I will return to D.C. (the night of May 14th, mark yer calendars!) Indefinitely. Yes, that’s right. I plan to brave a D.C. winter with ya’ll once and for all. I’ll look for a full-time job or internship (anything to be back with the refugees at the IRC) and hunker down. I enjoy it there. The little lives we’ve carved out for ourselves are quite perfect. And bicycles don’t go as fast on unpaved roads. And shamelessly dancing on U Street soothes my soul. And DC's slam poetry keeps me conscious. But, seriously, this trip has presented me with an quarter-life crisis. I am not sure being an aid worker in Africa is doing much good. And the life I have had this time around, although educational and independent has raised more questions than answers. Even as I attempt Swahili and eat with my hands and make all of those self-serving sacrifices, I am still an outsider. I can feel at home here, but perhaps that’s not the most important point. It was never supposed to be about me. So, although I love the romance and the adventures of an unreliable infrastructure, I also know it’s not going anywhere. Even if I’m okay at it and comfortable with the whole notion of living in another culture and place. Kenya will always be (too) welcoming. A new NGO will continue to crop up every week, started by hard-working and idealistic (sometimes naive?) people and USAID will continue to fund them. Ex-pats will continuously sit around with their $7 bottle of wine and discuss Kenya’s troubles and successes, as if they are our own. I need to formulate a stronger opinion and gain some more experience before I sit there. So, I will table my ideas of a foreign job for the meantime. I can always (and will) come back. It is my home away from home, after all.
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