Living Between Two Worlds: A Farewell to Tanzania

In general, life is one, big, balancing act.  I would say anyone over the age of 15 would probably agree with that.  In my still young, quickly approaching old age life, I have had the blessing and the curse of learning how to balance multiple things at one time on several different occasions.  When I was a young child, I lived between two houses and became the world’s youngest, most efficient packer.  It seemed that I was always packing a bag as I went from one house to another.  In high school, I was in every club imaginable as well as being an insanely driven and devoted athlete.  In college, I had two very different groups of friends, both of whom I loved, but between whom I had to split my time.  When I moved to New York after college, I had to learn how to balance building my first, real, on-my-own, adult life, keeping up with my college friends and finding a way to make sure that my family did not feel neglected. 

I suppose all of those events prepared me for now, for this moment: the biggest juggling act of my life thus far.  As I sit on the plane, now somewhere between the Netherlands and Boston, I feel like I am having an out-of-body experience.  I spent the entire leg of my journey between Tanzania and Amsterdam trading on and off between crying and sleeping.  I literally was doing one or the other the entire plane ride.  When I got to Amsterdam, I was able to connect to the internet for a short time before the free airport internet ‘ran out’.  The internet, for even a short time, was a true heaven sent, as I got to chat via What’sApp with Teddy and Inno for a few minutes.  Thank you God for the wonders of technology. Being able to text back and forth with them eased my anxiety, fears and sadness at least for a few minutes.  Plus, even though it was three o’clock in the morning in Michigan, my wise beyond his years baby brother was awake and was very comforting in his texts to me as well.  Texting him reminded me that although I have dreaded every second of coming home, I am fortunate to have many blessings, like Nick and the rest of my family, waiting for my return to the States. 

But, I am now on another plane, lost again in my thoughts.  I am returning to several familiar pieces of my former American life.  I get to spend a few days with my amazing family in Michigan before my mom and godmother pack up my life again and return me and all of my belongings to New York.  Back to my old, Brooklyn apartment which I love and back to the job I left last December to move to Tanzania which I also love. Returning to familiar things is one of the saving graces in this transition, and I am trying my best to not take that for granted.

Since I am returning to known entities, arguably I should find comfort in the familiarity.  I, however, am not the same.  Tanzania has changed me.  Now, this is not my first rodeo of returning to the States from a developing country, or from Africa specifically for that matter.  And, in all fairness, my time in Ghana was just as special to me as my time in Tanzania.  But after living in Tanzania for over half a year, finding my own Tanzanian family and falling in love the with the kids of Stella Maris over and over again each day, I have truly left a part of me, and a part of my heart, in Tanzania.

My life in America could not be more different than my life in Tanzania.  Please note the following rant is written entirely in generalizations and I fully realize the weakness of any argument grounded in generalizations.  Everything in America has a deadline, a specified timeline and harsh consequences for missing either of those. Especially when you work for a successful charter network on the East Coast and agreed to teach a full class load and serve as an instructional leader.  Unlike the relaxed, you are never really late (even if you are three hours late) approach in Tanzania. In America, there are a lot less dirt roads in the places I will be frequenting and I will have to readjust to driving on the opposite side of the street.  In America, it is easy to get caught up in complexities of life that I really enjoyed evaporating into thin air in Tanzania.   In America, the Internet will be the speed of light and almost always working.  Unlike in Tanzania, where there is always the possibility of the Internet not working, and if it is working, it is probably moving rather slow.  In America, people will keep their heads down and spend most of their days thinking about their to do lists, their busy schedule and their personal life.  In America, life is just hectic.  And often less fulfilling.  For me. 

So now, I have to figure out how to be present in America, read: not lamenting or dwelling on the fact that I am not in Tanzania.  And I have to be present in my life that is my American life – while holding onto the people, the traditions, the aspects of daily life of Tanzania.  At this current moment, where my emotions are sky rocketing and my optimism has temporarily hit rock bottom, the ability to merge these two worlds seems marginal at best.  Naturally, it will take me some time to get back into the American swing of things.  But the question I really have to decide for myself is do I want to get back into that swing?

How do I bring my adjusted self back to my former life? How do I hold onto the parts of my personality that I have strengthened in Tanzanian culture when American culture is so different? 

These are questions that will take quite some time to process.  I recognize my adjustment will not happen over night and I obviously have a lot to process.  I envision it being an uphill battle for a while, but that battle is far, far worth it.  The battle, and all of its hardships and causalities, is more than worth it because of the value of the experience of the last seven months of my life.

So, this will be my last post for now. 

Without a shadow of a doubt, I will be returning to Tanzania.  Sooner rather than later hopefully, and hopefully for another extended period of time.  Until those details are finalized, my writing will take a hiatus.  But, I figured the best way to close this amazing, life-changing, fulfilling, rewarding, educational, remarkable chapter of my life would be to share a few final pictures.

Thank you, Tanzania, for everything.

My farewell note to P5. 

Their reply. 

Harry Potter Frenzy

Thankfully, on the Saturday after my last day of teaching, P5 and I had a special event schedule – which made my eminent departure seem less real or at least temporarily forgotten. 

For the past few weeks, we have been reading the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  I have been so proud of my P5 babies for accepting the challenge of reading this book.  Not only is the English in HP fairly difficult for a native English speaker, but on top of that, there are ‘wizarding’ words that regularly appear throughout the entire story.  So, imagine that you are a young child reading stories in your second language.   You continually encounter words that are new to you – even with your massive English vocabulary.  But now you are reading a story that has ‘made up’ – for all intensive purposes – words that you have to learn in order to understand the story.  Before we started reading, I explained the nature of the book and asked them if they wanted to read it, due to its difficulty and additional vocabulary.  They all said they wanted to give it a go.  My pride swelled for them in that moment and every time we read together for the next several weeks.

Unfortunately, there was no way that we were going to finish the book in the four or five weeks I had left in country, but we started reading it anyway and made it through the first few chapters.  After the first week of reading, I realized that I could try to add some positivity to my soon departure by sharing with the kids that we could watch the movie version of the book before I left.  This way, although the kids would still be sad about me leaving, they would also have something fun to which to look forward right before my departure, which hopefully would make my leaving slightly more manageable for these precious angels. Anything I could do to make that transition easier for them, I would.

My kids have never seen any sort of motion picture before, so this was a very exciting proposition.  You should have seen their little faces when I told them about this idea.  They could barely sit still.  So, for four or five weeks, we read a few pages at the beginning of English class each day, and their excitement about the upcoming movie continued to grow. 

After a very sad Friday, my last day of teaching, my babies began to trickle in to school the following morning.  It sounds silly to say trickle ‘in’ because our school is essentially an ‘outdoor’ school, meaning the classrooms are in the shape of a horseshoe and you have to walk outside to move from one classroom to another. Our movie viewing Saturday was also the same Saturday of our follow up 'saving for secondary school' meeting where returned to Stella Maris with all of the needed documentation, and money, to open up a savings account for their child for secondary school.  A big day at Stella Maris, for sure.

Although I told pupils that they did not have to wear their uniform to our movie-watching event, some parents would not let their children leave home to attend a school function in anything but their uniform.  Thus, children arrived, some in uniform and some so excited, and proud, of their non-school clothes. The original plan was to watch our movie in the conference room of the lodge.  Teddy, as awesome as she always is, graciously agreed that we could use this room for our special occasion.  I believe her exact words were something like “Of  course, you can.  The hotel is for the school, right?”.  Reason 898040 why I love her.  As I made my way out of the hotel that Saturday morning for the parent meeting at the school, I checked in with Teddy to confirm that we could use the conference room, which has only been used twice during my entire time in Tanzania.   Unfortunately, Teddy forgot that on this lovely Saturday late morning/early afternoon, the conference room was very surprisingly being used.  So, that moved us to Option B of where to watch the movie: the P5 classroom – the one classroom that the electricity works in the school.  During the parent meeting, we tested the projector to make sure that a) it worked in the room and b) that you could see the image on the board.  Thankfully, the classrooms are ‘dark’ enough that the projector light was bright, allowing the projected image to be seen clearly.  

Conference room crisis averted, I called scholars together at 11 o’clock to begin our movie watching in the P5 classroom.  Extremely excited eleven and twelve year old children settled down into seats, and I began to set up the projector.  After several minutes of trying, checking the wires, making sure the outlet was turned on, yes, in Tanzania you have to turn on the outlet before power will run through it, we, the children and I, realized that the power was out.  :( And of course, the lodge’s generator does not reach the school, so we had no power to watch our highly anticipated movie.

Deep breath.  No problem.  We will find a way.  We HAVE to find a way, as I cannot let the 27 loves of my life down.  So, because it is Tanzania and it is common to leave children unattended, I left Siggy in charge of keeping everyone in line and walked back over the lodge.  I found Teddy, explained the situation to her and we decided that it would be best to bring the kids to the lodge and we could watch the movie in the dining area on the empty wall between the dining area and the lobby.  The only problem was that the dining area has large, large windows without any blinds or shades along the rather long sides of the rectangular room.  Teddy said that she would have the landscaping staff, Jordan and Masaii, hang some makeshift curtains on the windows closest to where we would watch the movie.  I walked back to the school, explained the situation to the kids and set expectations for how we would act in the lodge.  They of course complied and the appeal of our movie-watching endeavor increased as it now included watching inside the prestigious lodge.

Walking from the school to the lodge. 

My 27 loves and I trucked over to Option C of a viewing location, the lodge, computer, projector, and all the needed cables in hand. By the time we made our way over, Teddy had had Jordan and Masaii set up 27 chairs for my babies and they were beginning to hang up the curtains.  It was then just before noon, and the babies were patiently waiting for the projector materials to be set up again as well as the curtains to be hung to darken the room enough for the image to be visible on the wall.  The projector was set up well before the curtains, read extra blankets, comforters, etc, were hung, so in the meantime, we got a soda for each child to 'drink and be merry', and try to forget that they were waiting with nothing to do, while the setup was continuing.  Once 12:30 had passed, mind you, an hour and a half after the ‘start’ time of our movie viewing, Jordan and Masaii were still hanging up ‘curtains’ because the dining area was not yet dark enough – trust me, the kids asked me to start the movie again and see if we could see the image about every five minutes.  I looked around the dining area and made an executive decision that the space was just not going to get dark enough to view this movie.

Location Option C: the dining area of the lodge

My babies.  They HAVE to watch this movie.  Slight panic slowly seeped in, so I ran upstairs to grab some snacks to distribute to the kids as I figured out Plan D of a viewing location.  While I was running into my room, I realized how dark the hallway on the first floor was.  I wished to myself that the dining area could be as dark as the hallway.  Then it hit me.  If, big if, there were not any guests on one of the floors of the lodge, maybe Teddy would allow us to sit in the hallway and watch the movie.  The hallway would not be as fancy or nice – we could have to sit on the floor – but if we could actually see the movie, it would be a better alternative than our current spot.  I passed out the snacks, crackers with peanut butter in the middle, and made my way to Teddy to ask for another favor.  Teddy definitely looked at me like I was kichaa, crazy, when I originally asked to move my 27 loves to the hallway to watch the movie.  But, when she realized that there were not any guests staying on the second floor, she was agreeable.

I grabbed a couple of kids to help me move the computer, projector and the cables up to the second floor hallway, and to test this somewhat-crazy, hallway-viewing idea of mine out before moving 27 kids for the second time.  Thankfully, the width of the hallway was just wide enough from one spot in the hallway for the projector to display the image on the opposite wall large enough for all to easily see it. And, it was definitely dark enough to see the image clearly.  But, the only place where the hallway was wide enough to do this, of course, had a column in the middle of the floor - meaning that we would have to sit around the column, but beggars can’t be choosers and we were definitely beggars at this point.  So, with the assistance of my helpers, we got everything set up and went downstairs to collect everyone and move to Option D of a movie-viewing location. 

Just before 2:00, almost three full hours after our movie watching was supposed to begin, we actually started the movie in a space where we could see it. :) The kids were great.  They didn’t complain once about having to sit on the cold, hard floor.  They were so excited to watch the pages that we read in class come to life.  They controlled their responses to the silly/funny/odd parts of the movie, people flying, people running through walls, Harry talking to a snake, so well and they were captivated by every moment of the movie.  It was a great time.  We had popcorn and laughed a lot.  As the movie continued on, the kids got more ‘comfortable’ on the floor, sprawling out and leaning on one another.  I brought every pillow, sweatshirt, blanket, etc that I could find from my room to make the hallway more comfortable for my 27 loves. 

Location Option D: Success!

Getting comfy on the cold, hard floor!

One pillow, six girls? No problem!

About two hours into the movie, the movie that another American volunteer so kindly transferred to my computer so that I did not have to run around trying to find Harry Potter in Tanzania or rely on the internet to view the movie, the movie just stopped.  I had never watched the movie on my computer before our P5 viewing party, so I did not know that for some reason the entire movie did not transfer to my computer.  However, the part of the movie where it cut off was somewhat of a natural pause, read not in the middle of a cliff-hanger scene, and since we got such a late start of watching anyway, the kids were all fine with our movie watching stopping there.  I promised them that I would find a way to get the entire movie to them in the next couple of months, even if meant mailing the movie to the lodge from America. 

Quite an eventful day.  Not what I expected the day to hold.  But that has always been one of my favorite things about Tanzania: things often don’t go as planned, but somehow they almost always work out.  All of the logistical glitches and moments of stress were far worth seeing my P5 loves smile from ear to ear and belly laugh throughout the movie.  So glad that this was the way that P5 and I got to say our final farewell.   

One of the hardest goodbyes of my entire life.