It has been a whirlwind month, designed to distract me from the fact that i am home, which is good, but three weeks in, i still feel shellshocked. Not culture shocked, exactly. America is how i expected it, the change is more personal, more within me, and it has been a hard transition to verbalize.
I arrived home on the 6th of September, and flew out to Jackson, WY for Karl and Tara's wedding on the 11th. It was great to go out there- it was my first time west of Chicago and East of LA, and i have to say, Wyoming is beautiful. It was also really nice to see people from Uganda- there were 10 others at the wedding who had also spent time there- partly because it helped reaffirm for me that the whole experience really happened. Sometimes it all just seems surreal- and so drastically different that it is hard to believe the last year happened, that everyone i know and everything i did in Uganda also exists- or rather co-exists with everything here. It was also great to see old Uganda friends Jim and Sherri and Shannon, to see what they are doing, how they are dealing with Life After Uganda.
Here are a couple photos from the McMoser wedding, and my first attempts at wedding photography...
I also made it down to the Gauley river in West Virginia with the Seilers. Got to meet a bunch of cool new people, and got to reunite with a suprising number of paddlers who had been in Uganda. We are everywhere. The river was beautiful, and it was my first time running it in a kayak. The Seilers did a great job taking me down the upper and lower- though i will say it was a bizarre experiance to run a river that wasn't the Nile. I spent a day on the Special my last week in Uganda, just me and my friend Chris- the only two people on a world class wave. Then i was on the Gauley, with a 20 minute line for a little, not so great feature. Everything felt smaller, and the cold of the water was a shock. I had heard so many stories about how big the waves were on the Gauley. I saw two good sized waves. The rest are big, some nastly looking features, but they are long and low, and completly different. The Gauley was a ton of fun, and it was nice to run something a bit more techinical, get a bit of a challenge and some practice in reading water again, before heading out to nepal. The party of Gauley fest had also been much hyped up, and did seem a bit tame to me- but everyone else agreed that it was an off year for the festival itself, due in part to a new rule restricting the number of vehicles allowed within campsite grounds.
After Gauley i made it up to Saint Lawrenece University in Canton NY, to visit the little sister at college. It was her homecoming weekend, and the only thing i could think was "college is weird." A $120,000 education and the best vocabulary term i come up with is "weird". Its funny to experience a college that is not your own. I still have strong memories of Colby, and SLU was similar enough to evoke a lot of things i had forgotton. College is a funny bubble to go back and see as a recent outsider. All the kids dress the same, and they all talk about the same things, no matter where they go to school, quoting whatever they are learning in class that semester, so caught up in the bubble they live in, while still being really opiniated and wordly. It was neat, if somewhat disconcerting to see. All the same, it was really nice to meet some of Izzy's friends, and see what she had been up to in the year that i have been absent from her life. She even took me rock climbing at the wall where she works. Visiting Izzy made me miss my college friends, and i think will give me the kick i needed to get out of my post Uganda funk. OR maybe that was the 20+ hours in a car with the fam....
Seriously- there should be a re-integration process after living in Uganda, or specifically, the NRE bar, and then coming back into western culture. I don't mean visiting western culture, knowing that you are about to return to Uganda, but really re-entering western culture for an indefinite period of time. In her book "Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier" Alexandra Fuller writes "In late December I went home to my husband and my children and to the post -Christmas chaos of a resort town, but instead of feeling glad to be back, I was dislocated and depressed. It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River (Zambia) to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. The shock is too much, the contrast too raw. We should sail or swim or walk from Africa, letting bits of her drop out of us, and gradually, in this way, assimilate the excesses and liberties of the States in tiny, incremental sips, maybe touring up through South America and Mexico before trying to stomach the land of the Free and the Brave." (Fuller, Scribbling the Cat, 72)
This passage expressed more eloquently than i was capable, the experiance i was and still am going through returning to the states. As i said before, i almost feel shell shocked, like i am returning from a war. I haven't had the energy or the ability to deal with people, other than in limited doses. I have only just now set up voicemail on my phone, and have spent much of my first month back at home avoiding many of the people i wanted to see and to talk to. I think it was my way of trying to hold onto Uganda a little bit longer, as if by ignoring all the things i had come home to, i could pretend that i wasn't really home yet, or that i would for sure be going back as soon as possible.
Dislocated is an entirely appropriate word to use. I left my job and the life that i had established, and came home to very little that is concrete. As a result, i have been cranky and iritable, picking fights and being defensive over very little things. No matter where you are coming from, it isn't easy to return to your parents home. All the things you have accomplished, all the growth you maybe experianced, seems to vanish within the first 24 hours of being home. Your parents treat you as they always have, and you fall into old patterns- of behavior- bad habits-things you hope you had left behind. I've been unhappy since being home, and the easiest way to describe it is that i liked "me" better in Uganda than i do in Swarthmore, or even the states. And because of this, you feel almost guilty for not wanting to be home, not feeling glad to be back in America.
It is difficult as well trying to convey the experiances you have had in the past year; either to people you know, or to people you have just met. I feel a little bit like a science exhibit, my parents show me off- this is our daughter Anna, she just came back from AFRICA.. oooh... It is hard, because people don't always get it, or they arent comfortable, can't wrap their minds around living and working in Africa for a year. I feel a little embarrassed telling people- embarrassed maybe because i had the luxury of traveling and volunteering for a year, instead of starting to work to pay off loans, extravagant in what ive done the lifestyle ive lived, or also, just because as much as i want to share my experiances, i want to keep them for myself. Its a hard balance to figure out. The people that have been such a large part of my life for the past year are reduced to stories, and funny anectodes. "Is that the one who... "
It is refreshing to leave Uganda, and to get a different perspective, and its amazing what you start to miss. The states feel cold, and a bit sterile, or reserved. I just feel more constrained here than i did in Uganda, for many reasons im sure. The lawns are manicured, the dogs and children are clean. There is a suprising lack of wildlife here, notably birds. I got very used to the squabble and constant chatter of the birds and the monkeys in Uganda. Coming home in the fall, when most of the birds have already begun to migrate south- the air feels empty. It is nice to have a dusk again- because Uganda is so close to the equator, the sun sets quickly, you dont get that golden hour, or the fading of the day.
Of course ive enjoyed coming home to mine, and my sisters closets, and rediscovering all the things i own. One of the first things i did was clean out the closets. I was suprised to see how much stuff i had, how little i felt i needed it, and how quickly that opinion starts to change. American materialism. impressive. I keep telling myself i am not going to spend money, in attempt to save for nepal, but its hard. Things are expensive, and then you walk into a store, and suddenly you have bought a necklace, a pair of shoes, a movie, picture frames, or other things you dont need. Then you have buyers remorse. I often have buyers remorse. Fortunatley, im good at rationalizing.
I have been trying to ride my bike as much as possible, in lieu of driving a car. I forgot how much i enjoy driving- though having cars with suspension and paved roads was a bit of a shock, causing slight panic attacks because it felt as though we were going so much faster than we were.
In all, i can't wait to leave again, and have been thinking more and more seriously about returning to Uganda for at least another year. We shall see. In the meantime, more planning for Nepal is in order, and im going to do as much as i can with some of the photographs i took in Uganda. I will attempt (again) to load some online, and put up a post detailing some of my favorites. I already had a bunch printed to pick some for a Swartmore photographers exhibit, and the photoshop that printed them gave me smily face stickers, so i think some of them came out allright...
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1 comment:
You are very eloquent with your own words. And you are right it is hard going back to your parents from anywhere.
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