Leaving Africa

9 months of my life. And it's taken me another 3 to even force myself to sit down and write about it. What happened? I was supposed to be there for 2 years...
There were days of magnificent highs, spent climbing through waterfalls, spotting elephants through bus windows, or even just sharing a meal and laughing together with Mama Maua, happy about the slightest victory over the language barrier. There were other days I could barely hold myself together, boiling over in frustration with strage bus kondas trying to cheat me in a country where nothing ever gets done easily or on time, or ignoring everyone because I was so homesick I would cry at any moment and you can't do that in front of Tanzanians. Moments were I felt on top of the world and couldn't imagine doing anything else. Moments I would've traded it all in a heartbeat for an old friend's hug and a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. "The hardest job you'll ever love." Hmm. You can't understand how true that is until you experience it. In the end, I decided life is too short not to be with the people you love. That's the oversimplified explanation of why I left, but it gets the point across. That being said, I wouldn't change a single moment of the time I spent there. And not a day goes by that I don't think about the people I left, both the Peace Corps Volunteers and my villagers, and feel the sadness of missing them along with a stabbing guilt for abandoning them too soon.
Readjustment is so weird. Most of the time I feel like it's over, and it kind of saddens me how quickly I seem to have rejoined America. Then at moments I'm overcome with visions of Africa. I'll be at a bar or party in America, someplace full of careless fun. Next thing I know my brain will be back in Dosidosi, picturing the happy toddlers in their torn clothes, bellies distended, playing with sticks in the dirt. I get irrationally angry at the injustice between what I'm seeing here and what I saw there. I have to run away to go cry. How could I have left? I don't know if I helped there, but at least I lived meaningfully, with a pure purpose and no excesses. It's hard not to feel purposeless now, floating around empty with no idea where to go. I can only tell myself that I'll be back again, that this is only a brief intermission between adventures. Reentry...kind of makes me feel crazy.
Clearly Africa changed me. How could it not have? The thought of trying to sum up what I learned is daunting. How do I put 9 months of living/speaking/eating/breathing/sleeping Tanzania into a neat 500-word moral? Even now the tears are running as I remember all the amazing people I miss. Poverty is complicated and human. It is not statistics on a graph or images on a website. It cannot be solved by voting in elections or putting checks in the mail. Maybe it can't be solved at all. I lived in poverty alongside my villagers for 9 months and I've only begun to understand the factors at play. Everyone wants to save the world before they even experience it. The world is a crazy quilty of cultures and people who are all made of the same stuff no matter how differently they live. We can't make any progress without getting to know each other first. Peace Corps was the hardest thing I ever did because I was completely immersed in Tanzania. I learned their language, their foods, their work, their celebrations. I tried to teach a little bit but that will never compare to what they taught me. People are people no matter what and people are beautiful and amazing all over the world. I have family in Africa now. If you want my advice on how to help Africa, I would say to go and see it first. Go live and play and let it change your world. They say once your feet touch African dirt you'll always be back. I believe it.
Tupo pamoja.