So many people have asked that I post pictures and write in my blog to share all about my journey to Tanzania and life in Mbeya. I remember how cathartic is was to write and share about my experiences during my prior travels to Africa. I was excited to share. And, in this past week I have felt a strange reluctance... or perhaps a lack of motivation. Nothing felt quite like it had before or how I expected and I couldn't quite put my finger on why... until today.
See, the thing is... I don't feel like I have embarked on some epic adventure. I don't have any sense that I have traveled to some exotic place with new and strange experiences to share with everyone back in the States. I have not journeyed to some place of hardship and lack. I have not come as a young adventurer, thirsty for new experiences. I have not come as a missionary, sacrificing comfort to minister to unreached and isolated peoples. I have only come home.
I have come to a place that has been calling my heart for years, a place that feels more comfortable and familiar and ordinary than anything I have known in my country of origin. I have arrived at a next step in my career that allows me to live comfortably and without stress over finances, finally able to see a future where I am taking steps towards my financial goals. I have arrived at a place that offers me previously unrealized work/life balance. I live in a beautiful, comfortable, and spacious home. I wake up without an alarm, well-rested, to the sounds of animals and children and life all around me. I make breakfast, drink a cup of tea and get ready for the work day. I walk down the road to my office where I try to do my job well and build good relationships with my colleagues, while sharing in communal frustration with misbehaving technology and desperate pleas for help to the IT staff that I would be lost without. Bells and the calls to prayer sounding from the local mosque bring my attention to God and to prayer several times throughout my day and I pause, grateful for the reminder to thank the one who has given me a good life here. I leave the office at the end of the day, with things unfinished and waiting for tomorrow, and make the short walk back home, greeting members of my local community along the way. I walk through the gate of my compound, greet my neighbors and maybe borrow a needed item or ingredient. I put the key in the door, greet the cat that is happy to see me home, set down my bag and proceed to start with cooking dinner. I check Facebook, I read, I snuggle with the cat... and then I lay down, content and satisfactorily tired, listening to the dogs and the pigs as I drift off to sleep with a warm and furry little body next to me - the place where she calls home.
This is the most ordinary life I have ever lived and my soul has been longing for it for years. And now, I can only breathe a sigh of contentment and wonder how to explain that there is nothing foreign at all about this new life I get to live. I never could get the hang of this outside of Africa.
