Clarity and Seeking Catharsis: Reflections on My Untimely Depature from Tanzania

pee with a view

familia yangu

sunsets in Same

my best friend and partner Jonas

my family, mama doria and annie

Same sunsets

dada yangu

Stay with what hurts, however much it hurts, until you have worked something out about yourself and the world.

I just spoke to my mother. We discussed all of the changes and the unknown that is sprawling out before me. I told her how exhausted I have felt lately; a kind of tiredness I have never experienced before. It feels like it is radiating out from the center of my body, laying heavy on my heart. We discussed my fears and doubts and guilt-inducing joy about all that is to come. I excitedly told her about all of the connections and puzzle pieces I feel coming together. And then she said, “Sometimes you have to move thousands of miles away for get clarity.” And I felt my breath catch in my throat. I felt my heart beating in my chest. At the beginning of every new year, I sit on my yoga mat, I meditate, and I journal. I reflect on the lessons learned, the things that worked in the previous year, the things I want more of or less of in the year to come. And then I choose a word for the new year. A couple weeks ago, after sitting in meditation, breathing into my heart, I landed on my word for 2020: clarity. And so, as my mother tells me that it’s no wonder I am finding clarity after moving thousands of miles away, I am not at all surprised. Of course, this is my word. This is my deepest desire for the year to come, clarity. Of mind, of spirit, of body, of purpose. After I hung up the phone I walked out into my courtyard and looked up at the sky. The last few months, I have not been able to see the full moons. They have been shrouded in cloud cover and rain. But as I stepped into my courtyard tonight, the first full moon of 2020, appeared from behind clouds, in all of her glory. The leaves of the banana trees, with which I’ve grown so accustomed, are shimmering in the milky glow of moonlight. As the clouds move to reveal the moon, I feel it, clarity, emanating out from my center. I will be leaving this village in five days. Due to circumstances far beyond my control, I, along with the fifty other volunteers I came here with, are required to leave Tanzania much earlier than expected. I have tried to write about this many times over the last few weeks. But it has only just arrived with the full moon. The truth that feels like far too much for my heart to bear. I am leaving Tanzania. I expected to stay here until March of 2021. Instead, I will be leaving here on January 25th. I have spent the last few weeks trying to square this circle. How could I possibly leave these people with whom I have created such strong friendships? How could I possibly be ready to return to America, when I have become so fully immersed in my life here? My feelings fluctuate across a vast spectrum within minutes. Perhaps within the same minute I can feel a full range of emotions. I am heartbroken to leave these people. I am scared that the reverse culture-shock will take the wind out of me. I am nervous that the rate of change in America will not mirror my own change I have experienced in the last year. I am excited at the prospect of what the next year holds, something far beyond my imagination. I am scared that the energy and gratitude I feel every day here will not translate into my life back in America. I am awe-struck at how home I feel, sitting in this tiny mountain home having just spent my whole day speaking in Kiswahili with members of my community. I am grateful for having experienced any small part of this year. There have been moments of sheer panic and discomfort. I have sat through hours long meetings not understanding a single word as they speak in Kipare, the tribal language. I have eaten foods, or pretended to eat foods, that are totally foreign to me. I have ridden on buses for over twelve hours wedged up next to an old Maasai woman while rain poured through the window onto my back. Last week I very nearly shit my pants. I have stood in the rain at bus stations soaked to the bone. One time I literally thought I might die on the bus in Dar es Salaam because I couldn’t breathe. I’ve been propositioned by what feels like hundreds of men, asking for marriage, babies, money, or all of the above. I have gotten mosquito bites, Nairobi fly bites, unknown bug bites, sunburns, and mystery rashes, and major fevers, and colds, and a keen distrust of how my body might handle any food on any given day. I have been laughed at on the daily for over a year. And all the while, there have been moments of sheer, heartbreakingly powerful joy and gratitude. My little sister, Annie, in all her two-year-old fierceness running towards me shrieking. Sitting with Annie and playing I Spy, as we look out at the valley below us. Sitting in the jikoni – kitchen – with Mama Doris and talking about love and life and husbands and babies. The moment I first arrived here in Mvaa, and Mama Doris came to me and wrapped me into her arms in a way I have never been held. Like I was coming home to a place that I had never been before. The endless gifts of eggs, bananas, coffee, bread, ginger, mangos, avocados, and on and on. The way, every time I walk into the weekly farmers meeting, they all turn towards me and greet me like a long-lost friend, no matter if they’ve just seen me earlier that same day. Sitting at Side’s and talking with all of the people as they come and go. The way the young men now correct each other if one of them calls me mzungu. Watching the ebb and flow of kivukoni, while sitting on the back of Jon’s piki piki. The vijana laughing and shouting and revving their engines. The chapati, all of the chapati. Sitting next to Dori in an overly crammed van, listening to Van Morrison, when I saw elephants in the wild for the first time. The feeling I had while teaching the secondary school students about sexual health with Jonas, how we had such flow together as we moved around the classroom, the strange melody of English and Kiswahili. Drinking Arabic coffee with Babu Raymond, the man who, since day one, has called binti yangu - my daughter. When I stood in front of a classroom and led an entire meeting in Kiswahili. The way the morning sun casts itself on the trees surrounding my house. The simple fact that I’ve gotten to wake up here every day for the last year. I suppose I could go on forever, filling page after page with moments that broke my heart wide open. Through even the most challenging moments I have chosen to lean into joy, knowing full well that it will hold me there. Yesterday I cried into my coffee with Mama Doris. Today I cried while eating chapati with Jonas. And it feels like a relief. I have been feeling numb. The last few weeks I have felt removed, disconnected, and afraid. And finally, this week it arrived, clarity. The full realization that I am leaving. And there is a relief in finally telling people. Perhaps the sense of numbness came from the fact that I felt I was pretending. People would mention something about future months, and I would nod and laugh nervously. Because the truth is, for the last month or two, I have not known what would happen. It is only now, this week, that I know, I am leaving. And so, I am spending every last minute with these people, telling them why I am leaving and then just sharing stories and food and these small moments of our lives together. I have so very much I want to express to my community here. And instead, I must rely on my knowledge of Kiswahili to express the depths of my emotions. Needless to say, I’m not getting my point across fully. My tears are surely doing the job, but Tanzanians aren’t wont to cry publicly. Perhaps at funerals, but otherwise, I’ve never seen a Tanzanian crying. I feel a sense of guilt that I have been far more changed than I have changed anything in this community. And, I suppose I knew coming into this experience that this would be the case. Even if I had been given the opportunity to stay here for another year, the impact I would have would pale in comparison to the impact this place is having on my life. I once read about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with gold. I think about this often. With each day here, I feel I have been broken into all of my essential pieces, and then pieced back together with solid gold. It has been the most painful and powerful experience of my life thus far. This year has been a crash course in slowing down. Coming into my body, coming into my mind, and seeing all of the pieces of myself laid out before me. Clarity. It is funny that perhaps my word for 2020 is something I have spent the last year working towards. I have spent hundreds of hours lying in child’s pose at my altar, praying for relief. Because it all felt too much. The pain, the beauty, the immensity of the gratitude coursing through me. I broke into pieces. And spent hundreds of hours considering those pieces of myself, the pieces I wanted, the pieces that were flawed and wounded, the pieces I needed to discard. And hundreds of hours spent reassembling, bringing it back together with gold. And perhaps this is the final lesson, the final moment of clarity. That pain is intrinsic in love this big. That to feel love this big is to feel pain. The heartbreaking bounty of connection. The knowing that it is ephemeral. That every shared laugh, held hand, embrace, kiss, in our stories shared, we are at any given moment experiencing a love far too big for our hearts to hold. And so, we break. We must break. And then we build again, expansive, gold-coated cracks and edges. Raw, but rebuilt. Proof that we have felt pain, that we have loved and that we would willingly choose to do so again. A final moment of clarity, as least for today.