Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Kwa Heri

          Red Smith said that writing was easy. You just sit down at a typewriter, open a vein, and bleed. Here goes.
Nziku walked me back to my house at 10pm on Thursday night. I was leaving at 8am Friday morning. I’d had so many plans when I woke up that morning. I was going to paint a mural, pack, and say goodbye to each and every person that I loved in my village. Yet somewhere in between dawn and dusk, things happened, and life happened, and tasks remained undone. At the end of the day, at the end of two years, I had to accept the things I couldn’t change, the things I didn’t change, and the things that I could change...but only if I was willing to go without sleep. Which I was. I left Nziku at 10, wrote a four-page letter to the next volunteer, then wrote my final journal entry. At that point it was midnight. Nziku was coming back at 6am. The hours in between are a blur. I burned papers, packed bags, repacked bags, and stirred up so much dust that my nose began to resemble a waterfall. I always had more to do, and more to pack, but at some point I just started leaving things, putting them to the side, knowing that they would find a deserving home. It was like abandoning a foreign embassy before a war. 


          I wish I could say that I took some time for introspection...but I didn’t have the time. Also, when you live by yourself and spend at least an hour writing every day, you grow pretty damn tired of the sound of your own thoughts. I was exhausted. I had reached a place beyond feeling, or at least I thought I had. The last few days had been wonderful, but brutally tiring, with my goodbye party, finishing my world map, and running around, trying to say goodbye to an entire community one by one. Some people I got to, some weren’t home, and some wanted to sit for hours. I was fed 5 times in my last day. Each and every one asked me why I wasn’t staying? Didn’t I love it here? Couldn’t I just extend a year, or three? In my head, each time, the answer was the same as Mary Poppins’ answer: “And what would happen to me, may I ask, if I loved all the children I said goodbye to?” But of course she loved all of them, and I loved my villagers. Which meant that I had to tell them that while this life was perfect, it wasn’t mine, it was only borrowed. I’m not sure they understood me. That’s ok. I’m not sure I did either. Eventually, wouldn’t you know it, the sun set again. The day wouldn’t last forever. No matter how far I stretch those 24 hours, in the end they always run out.


          I went over to Nziku’s house one last time, for dinner. I remember when I used to come here, and we would eat, just him and me, with the rest of the family eating outside, as is the custom for a male visitor. I felt weird and bad about the family being exiled because of me, and I told him so. He assured me that it was normal, that nobody was bothered or blamed me. Yet when I kept coming over for dinner, on average once a week, the rules started relaxing. Sometimes his wife would eat with us, sitting on a stool besides the couch. Sometimes the kids would eat in the next room, or maybe in the doorway. But by my last night in the village, we just sat down and ate our ugali as a family. When it was over we talked, trying desperately to find something to say, me explaining the time difference for the umpteen time, just because the kids loved hearing me tell them that while it may be dark here in Idetero, in America it is high noon. I’m not sure they ever believed me. I’m still not sure I believe it myself.

  Nziku and I walked the thirty meters from his door to mine. I looked up at the sky, at the stars, at the Milky Way, at the universe, and wondered at how life could be so big. Then the walk was over, and I went inside my house, said goodnight to Nziku, worked for 8 hours, and then he came back in and said good morning. The candles were all in the same place, just a whole lot shorter. They were the only things still in the same place. The night was over, and now it was Moving Day. The woman who had rented the village my house wanted it back, and wanted it empty. 


          The sky started to lighten, and more of Nziku’s family, my family, arrived at my door. My things started flowing out of my house like blood out of the vein. There went my shelves, and my sheets, and my spices. My bed was dismantled and moved out in pieces. The sky grew bright, just like it had the day before when I was stretching to run, and I wasn’t sure if it was today or yesterday or two years ago. I wanted to see the sun rise for the last time in my village. I went to tell Nziku that I would be right back. By the time I found him, the sun was up. It was over. I looked at my friends running forwards, clearing my house out, erasing me piece by piece, and I wanted to shout, “WAIT! STOP! I’m not ready yet!” But I couldn’t. It was too late. It was over. I wanted to go see Weston before I left, because I remembered my first night in the village, when he came and looked at me and said that we would do great things together. I needed to know if he thought that he had been right. I started to walk up the hill towards his house in a daze. I heard a sound and looked down the hill. The car was already here. I’d expected it around 8. It was 7:40. How many hours had I sat and waited for cars here in Tanzania? How could I get all those hours back and spend them here, in my home, with Nziku and Weston and my family, and have THIS car come back in a year? I called Weston. It didn’t ring. I never saw him. It was over. There wasn’t enough time.

  I looked around. The house was empty now. Kenzie was in the car, already in transit to America, already homeless, looking a dozen times more intact than I felt. She jumped out. Nditu, the charming, painfully punctual driver got out. Everyone seemed to be moving at double-time, rushing me, pushing me out of Idetero, out of my life. Now they were looking at me. My bags were already in the car, and the sun was up, and would be again tomorrow, but I wouldn’t see it, not here, not that way it seemed to be a foot and a half above your head, and then to take all the heat with it at sunset like a lover stealing the blankets. I couldn’t look at any of them. They wanted me to say something, say the right thing, and to get into the car like I had a plan. I didn’t have a plan. It took me two years to believe that the life I was living here was actually real, and now that I believed it, they wanted me to leave it. Couldn’t do it. I grabbed some pig medications that I’d found under my bed during the night, told Nziku I had to give them to Mama Oslo myself, and started running down the hill, away from all of them, leaving them so I didn’t have to leave them. 

  I got to her house, so close to mine. Why didn’t I visit it more? I loved it here. What else was I doing that always made me rush? I called out, “Hodi”, and she said, “Karibu”, and in I went. I gave her the medications awkwardly, embarrassed to be brought here by work, by something undone, rather than my own very real desire to give it all up and stay in this house forever. She took the meds, then held my hands and said that we should pray. So we prayed. She is an Assemblist of God. I have been lucky enough to go to church with her, and it’s just...different. There is speaking in tongues, and yelling, and a fervent, passionate form of prayer, as if each person’s individual salvation or damnation hinges on the intensity of their supplication. It was no different today. She began to pray, for me. She prayed for God to watch over me and give me strength and protect me on the journey I was about to embark on, but more, to protect me on the journey of life. She prayed for me, her voice rising in volume and deepening in tone, and I closed my eyes and listened. The house seemed to grow larger, and the two of us smaller. Her voice sped up, and I found myself wondering, not for the first or the twelfth time: what do I believe in? Their church, and its rules and ways, that I can’t, or won’t, get behind. But their faith, their burning, wild desire to believe in a greater, benevolent something, that I can’t shake. The faith is real, and when somebody chooses to exercise it on your behalf...it’s incredibly powerful. Mama Oslo, Lusia Kalinga, prayed on, in time to a rhythm that I couldn’t hear, praying for my soul, praying for me to be happy. Through tightly-closed eyes, I began to cry. 

  I left the village maybe ten minutes later, hanging out of the window, waving goodbye to a people and a place and a time, waving myself goodbye, the part of me that wasn’t leaving, that would never leave, that could never leave. The final goodbyes were too short and too awful and didn’t convey a fraction of my gratitude and my love...but hopefully, they didn’t have to. If I had truly done my job here, then everyone knew already. The car pulled away, into the sunrise, and I had just enough time to whisper a goodbye to the Lollipop Tree...and then it was well and truly over.


          I came to Idetero two years ago, frightened to my core about doing a job I didn’t understand in a place I’d never lived. I was smarter then, when I knew less. I wanted to change things. Now I want them to stay the same. There is a horrible cycle of poverty and paternalism that started in this part of the world long before I came to it, and will continue long after I’ve left, and I didn’t change that. But as I lived here and grew here, I began to believe that the true tragedy is the utter lack of a cultural self-confidence. These people truly believe that I’m better than they are. And if I’ve accomplished anything in two years here, it might be reducing that sense of inferiority, maybe, just a little. By dancing the Dua (the Hehe tribal dance) with them, by carrying water, by making them laugh and laughing with them, by sitting around at the end of the day and doing nothing, together. I’ve written in this blog so many times about how we’re not so different, and also how different we actually are. Both are true. We are unfamiliar equals. And I can’t live with all of you, and all of them. I can’t bring my two worlds together. I can’t even bring myself together. I’ve broken my heart, broken it right in two and left half of it here.


          But no matter how much it hurts right now, I’ve loved every second of my life here, even when I was frustrated and mad and lonely. I won’t trade it for anything, and god willing, I won’t forget a moment of it. This is my life, and I’ve lived the shit out of it, and this is the greatest thing I’ve done with it so far, and it’s over. For all I did wrong or failed to do or couldn’t do, I’m sorry. For all that we were able to do together, I’ll never be able to say thank you enough. I love this village. I love all of the people in it. There’s only one thing left to say.


          Kwa Heri. Goodbye.

1 comment:

  1. I am so proud of what you were able to do over the last two years, and that you made the commitment nearly 4 years ago to make a difference and gave your all to that end, even though we humans can never attain perfection. Your ability to put your experiences into words never ceases to amaze me and I know this last one was hard to write, but DAMN you're good, as you moved me to tears.
    I can't wait to share in the next chapter of your life - hard to follow this one (maybe it will be a Tolkien epic) - but it will be great to have you around in person more regularly. Can't wait to see you!

    DAD

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