Fast forward to now. Still unemployed? yep. Still living with my parents? yep. Still waiting for Peace Corps paperwork and dentist appointments? yep. But we all know my life is in shambles, thats practically my calling card these days, so what else is new? Today I got my box.
4 months and 3 weeks ago I made a list of all the things I could remember in my Selibaby home that I might someday want sent to me here in the states. So here I am, this very morning, in my winter hat, coat, and scarf, mittens dangling from my coat sleeves, walking briskly up to my porch steps in the snow and cold after a nice long walk with the dogs and there it is. My box. It should feel like Christmas right? A big box of memories from when my life was making sense, little trinkets to remind me of the people and the places that I love on the other side of the world; but it wasn't really what I'd hoped or expected to find. As I cut through the tape and untied the bag, peeled back the plastic and started pulling out my dusty clothes and wrinkled photos, I realized that these were all the worst parts of that world. The vibrant wax prints dulled by coats of African dust and torn by months of constant wear, I thought they would speak to me, saying "remember the places we have seen" but instead they said "look what I have become." They were beautiful, but now they're faded, they were clothes but now their fabric, useless in the trappings of the world I live in now. As I pulled things out of the box, the tattered sketches, scratched CDs, stained books, and bent photos, I wasn't happy to see them again, I was longing for the place I knew that they had been. They got to stay there longer than I did. They got to say goodbye.
I've been so positive and so optimistic these 5 months, applying for jobs, making small pilgrimages out of Vermont to visit friends and have some semblance of a social life, trying to plan my next move. Every time though, that something gets close, like a move, or a job opportunity, I get cold feet, re-think it 12 million times, and sometimes push it aside in favor of waiting for a bigger adventure. When I pulled out these wrinkled, dirty, old clothes, I realized that its been easy to pretend everything is okay here because I haven't closed the book on Mauritania. My time in the Peace Corps still represents the best stories I have to tell, the memories most eagerly shared. I still haven't called my host family, not once, in the almost 5 months since I said goodbye and boarded that plane in Senegal. I couldn't figure out why, I knew I was afraid but not what I was afraid of, but now I know. I was waiting, hoping the Peace Corps would re-open the program, hoping I could call them and say this is when I'll be back. That is not happening, and its time I came to grips with it. I don't think I'm done with the Peace Corps or with Africa forever. I don't know when I might go back but I still get this longing in my heart when I read about other volunteers and their adventures around the world. I don't want to be done with the exciting part of my life, so if I rule out grad school, and if I don't get hired by the Discovery Channel to be Mike Rowe's assistant on Dirty Jobs (my DREAM job!!) then perhaps sometime very soon I may find myself at another staging event for another country, getting ready to spend what I hope will this time be 2 full years in Africa...again. Until then, its still one photo a day from me and constant adventure hunting. Here is todays photo, my Africa in a box.
Days Left: 342
Photos Posted: 23
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