Category: Leaving Tanzania Page 1 of 5

What It Was Like To Go Back

On July 10, 2024

I had forgotten many things in four years: the feel of my bare feet on smooth tile floors. The sounds of critters in the ceiling above my head when trying to sleep. A fancy wooden chair leaking sawdust from termites.

We arrived at the Dar es Salaam airport at 3 a.m., an hour later than scheduled, which meant that four flights arrived at the same time, overwhelming the baggage workers. It took two hours to get our luggage, and we blearily exited the airport at 5. There were 11 of us total: six Medinas and five Snyders, them with a decade of living in Tanzania, us with 16 years. You probably think we should have known what we were doing.

Almost instantly, we all realized that we had also forgotten how hard it is to live in Dar es Salaam – especially arriving at the airport all on our own, with no car, no home, no SIM card. We felt like brand-new foreigners all over again.

Our AirBnb host had offered to send a car to the airport to meet us, but the driver missed the memo that his job was to lead the two vans that followed him with our luggage and the rest of us. Most houses do not have addresses, and the pin on AirBnb was incorrect, which meant that we spent a good portion of our first morning directing our van drivers in circles as we tried to find the house—with no address and no local cell service.

When we finally arrived at the AirBnb we discovered there were no towels and no top sheets and no drinkable water and a pre-paid electricity allotment of only eight units a day, which was barely enough to keep the lights on. So we dug into our jetlagged brains and remembered again how to buy more electricity and how to find bottled water and breakfast for our cranky children and cranky selves.

After the first few days, we planned to move to a bigger AirBnb because the Dunkers were flying in from Kenya to join us. But the day before, I discovered this second house did not exist.

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh. We resurrected this dormant skill.

Still, I asked myself, How did I love this place? Everything is hard. Everything is frustrating.

But then I remembered.

Soon after we discovered that we had nowhere to go, well, we suddenly had a place to go. Carley, who has been our friend since 2005, heard about our plight and invited us all to stay at the Young Life ministry center. We found ourselves staying at a place that was way better than any AirBnb. Our kids hung out with her amazing quadruplets while Gil and the Dunkers held the Reach Tanzania Bible School reunion and Ben and Lauren and I made plans for our team, who would be arriving soon.

I was reminded of how we navigated the hardness and frustrations of living in Dar for so many years: we had an extraordinary community. Oh, right. This is why nobody new was ever allowed to arrive without a host. Shame on me for assuming we could handle going back to Tanzania on our own without leaning on our community. In four years, I have become so American. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone. We can handle this independently. No, we couldn’t.

My Cup Runs Over

By Amy Medina

On June 3, 2024

In Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America

A week ago we held an Open House to celebrate Grace’s graduation and I was expecting 30 people or so–family, our Home Group, some teachers. But unbeknownst to me, when I told my gregarious oldest child that she could include “a few friends,” she interpreted that as, oh, say, 50 or so. In my last post, when I said that my girl loves people, well, there’s the proof.

So when 75 souls–more than half of them teenagers–paraded through my house over the course of three hours, well, let’s just say there wasn’t any salami or cheese left by 5 pm.

I was exhausted, yes. But I also stood back and marveled: we’ve come so far in four years. I think of my sweet lost girl four years ago, torn from the only home and country and school she’d ever known, starting her freshman year sitting masked at a computer in the school library while her teachers taught in empty classrooms. I remember her telling me of the shy girl who sat next to her, never saying a word. “Grace Medina,” I chided her. “You go in there and win that girl over. Do your magic. That’s what God created you for.”

So she did.

I think of Gil, one of those teachers in an empty classroom, struggling with new curriculum and new students and hating every moment he had to talk into a computer instead of real faces. He came home miserable every day, reminding himself that the only reason he took this job was so that we could put our kids in a great school. Yet– last year, he was chosen by the seniors to be their commencement speaker, and this year he was chosen as Teacher of the Year. At Baccalaureate, two of the five student speakers talked about how his Worldviews class changed their lives.

His life has changed too.

I think of my own days sitting at my computer in my beige apartment, entering a church and a school community at a time when no one knew what the social rules were anymore so everyone gave up trying to be social. Emptiness gnawed my insides, reminding me moment by moment of what I had lost, who I had lost, myself that was lost. Sadness hung around me, limp and raggedy, all of the time.

My life is still quieter than it used to be, but I love what I do. My work introduces me to the most interesting and wonderful people whom God is calling to do interesting and wonderful things, and I get to have a part in their stories. My life is full and my garden is growing and I had 75 people in my house last week, which is one of my most favorite things of all.

Not all the loss is replaced. I don’t think it’s ever supposed to, completely. If it were, then it would somehow demean what you left behind. I started out wanting to replicate the richness and meaning of my life in Tanzania, and because it could never look like that, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be happy again. Yet, here I am, living a life of contentment with pockets of joy, which is just about all one can hope for on this side of heaven.

So, it feels like perfect timing that God is giving all six of us Medinas the chance to visit Tanzania again this month. And even sweeter, a team of people who represent our lives from school and church are joining us. We get the unusual and poignant opportunity to collide our worlds. My two big kids each have one of their besties on this trip–which means that for the first time in their lives, they get a chance to see their old world through the eyes of someone in their new world. I’m praying that they return back to their new home standing a little straighter in who they are and where they came from.

Planning the logistics for this trip, alongside the many activities of the end of the school year and Grace’s graduation, is the reason why you haven’t seen me in this space very much in the last few weeks. And it’s the reason why you still won’t see me for a few weeks more. But I’ve got lots to say, all stored up, and I’ve even got an exciting writing project to tell you about. So please don’t stop coming around. You all are the best, and you keep me writing.

I Coped Well in Transition…Until I Didn’t

By Amy Medina

On April 14, 2023

In A Life Overseas, Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America, Thoughts on Missions

This post was first published at A Life Overseas.

I remember all the dogs at the Dar es Salaam airport. Usually people don’t travel internationally with their pets, but in the spring of 2020, nothing was normal. The dogs were restless in their cages, but the rest of us stood unusually still, tense, our faces strained from lack of sleep, frantic packing, a thousand unknowns.

I remember the recorded British voice that politely reminded everyone every five minutes: It is not permissible to bring plastic bags into Tanzania. In a dark humor, I thought, How about infectious diseases?

Just a few days earlier, we got a call in the middle of the night telling us to book a flight as soon as possible. Many in our community were making the same decision, but it was even more significant for us. We had planned a year earlier to relocate to the States in the summer of 2020. So this early, frenzied departure meant leaving a life of sixteen years with no closure, no dignity, no RAFT.

The memories of these moments in March 2020 are sharp and vivid, as if they happened three days ago, not three years.

In the five days before our departure, I can picture myself lining up my kids’ baby shoes, carefully saved for so many years, and taking pictures of them before handing them off to a friend. I remember making broccoli beef for my last meal in the crock pot I’d owned for 12 years. I remember how our feet echoed on the empty marble floors of the Ramada hotel restaurant on the night before we left.

I could list thousands of tiny, minuscule details of those five days. My focus was razor-sharp. My emotions were not.

Other than a couple of bursts of despair or panic, I went numb during those five days. And then during the long, unpredictable journey to California. And then during the next three months when we lived like vagabonds, trying to hold together our jobs in Tanzania while applying for new ones in the States.

If you had asked me how I was doing, I would have told you I was okay. I wasn’t happy, and sometimes I was decidedly unhappy, but I didn’t fall into a depression. I got out of bed every morning. I wasn’t crying all of the time. I wasn’t having panic attacks. I wasn’t having nightmares. Well, not many.

I am task-oriented. I did what I needed to do. And big feelings were not on the agenda.

But I was not okay, and that fragility manifested in unexpected ways. Suddenly, I had an aversion to anyone outside my immediate family. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, even people I normally would have been thrilled to be with. (Pandemic restrictions made this easy.)

Another A Life Overseas writer asked me to be on a podcast of people who were evacuated because of the pandemic. A little voice in my head said, “You like things like this.” But a bigger, louder voice said, “No. No. NO. Not even an option.” The big voice didn’t give me a reason. It just bullied me into saying no.

I stopped writing. I went months where my mind was mostly devoid of anything to write about, even though it was usually the best way to process my feelings. It was like my emotions froze, and I became a robot.

I was trying to adapt to a new life, and I was restless and impatient. I wanted to feel productive and meaningful again. But I had no energy, no creativity, no mental space. I could only focus on what was directly in front of me. I was frustrated that I couldn’t do more, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. I thought I was fine. I knew I was sad, but I thought I was handling our transition well.

I wasn’t. Not really.

About a year and a half after our arrival, my brain and body decided to shut down, and I stopped sleeping for ten days. I finally got help. I told the urgent care doctor, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know what anxiety feels like, but this is different. It’s like I’m on overload and can’t get my pulse to slow down.” That admission was the beginning of feeling better.

I’ve been back three years, and it’s taken me that long to figure out what was happening inside me during that first year and a half. I only see it now in hindsight.

There are times in life you know you’re a mess; the pain or the fear is big and consuming. Every moment of every day feels like a fight. (I’ve had seasons like that, and this wasn’t one of them.)

But other times, you don’t realize you’re in a fog. You are coping quite well. You are doing what you need to do. You don’t realize your soul is actually withering. Then one day, the sun breaks through the clouds and triggers a distant memory: Oh yes! This is what warmth feels like.

This is what it feels like to be creative, my mind brimming with ideas.
This is what it’s like to live without a constant sense of being overwhelmed.
This is what it feels like to be happy.

I didn’t recognize that I wasn’t doing well until I started to feel better, and to remember what it feels like to be fully alive.

Today, I love being with friends and meeting new ones. I’m doing seminars for small and large groups. I was a guest on a podcast. My brain comes up with way more things to write about than I have time to get them out.

I don’t think I anticipated the jarring effect the transition would have on my body, mind, and soul. Or that it would last as long as it did. Seeing this in myself has given me empathy for others around me who are in transition: the new parents, new empty-nesters, the immigrant. How can I show them grace? How can I help to bring light into their fog? How can I walk alongside them for as long as it takes, knowing it will probably take longer than anyone anticipated?

But also, I want to remember to give myself grace the next time. To be more patient with myself. To remember that some of the hardest parts of life must simply be faced a day at a time until they get better.

This morning at church, a song unearthed a sweet memory of Tanzania, and I cried. For what I left. For what I’ve missed. For what I’ve gained. For how far I’ve come.

Metamorphosis

By Amy Medina

On August 22, 2022

In Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America

I’m standing in a dusty marketplace in Dar es Salaam, surrounded by shanties selling piles of mangos, bicycle parts, and bright plastic tubs, buses interweaving. The sky turns dark, ominous. Foreboding hangs in the air, yet I am thrilled by the storm. Then, a crushing, permeating sense of loss. The rain falls and mixes with my tears. I wake up, and my face is wet. Loss lingers, dredged up from my subconscious.

Memories fall on me at the oddest times. I hear the phrase That’s why come out of my mouth and my mind flicks to Lucy. Ndiyo maana, she says, followed by That’s why in her thickly accented English. We’re studying Swahili at my beautiful mninga wood kitchen table, which Gil and I commissioned from the Lebanese guy downtown, the one who copies his furniture from Ikea catalogs. Behind me on the wall is the large world map, and on the opposite wall is the little cabinet holding the dishes gifted to me by the 6th-grade class I taught in 2006. I can hear the buzzing of the saws from the carpenter shop next door and the occasional crowing of a rooster. Lucy laughs her big laugh (Lucy is always laughing) and asks me to repeat after her: Ndiyo maana.

Lucy writes to me occasionally on WhatsApp, and I feel my Swahili slipping out of my brain. Sometimes I think I should start learning Spanish since it would be useful in Southern California, but I fear it would take up the spaces that Swahili fills. What if I forget Ndiyo maana?

Two Years Back

By Amy Medina

On March 16, 2022

In Leaving Tanzania

I had never seen so many pets at the airport.

On March 25, 2020, no one was panicking at the Dar es Salaam airport. But all those pets, restless in their hard plastic crates, added to the air of foreboding. People traveling for business or tourism don’t take their pets on international flights. But they do when running away.

Ironically, it was also the first time I had been at that airport. For two decades, we had flown out of the tiny Dar airport – only six gates, despite the thousands who passed through it every week. The new, large, modern airport had opened in late 2019, complete with towering, echoing ceilings, a Pizza Hut, and a polite British voice that announced every five minutes, Attention travelers: It is not permissible to bring plastic bags into Tanzania.

We stood in line in that shiny new airport in the quiet, tense air and wondered if our plane was even there and if the airport in Qatar was even open and if they were even going to let Johnny on that flight. And when they let us through, I was relieved but also devastated because part of my heart hoped that they would turn us away and we would be forced to stay in Tanzania, even though we had already sold our beds.

The memories are vivid: the pets at the airport. How Johnny almost couldn’t board until the woman from the embassy just happened to be in line next to us and advocated on our behalf. How our kids were excited to get soft-serve ice cream at Pizza Hut, but I was nauseous and everything tasted like dust in my mouth. How it felt like we were running away from home.

Five days after we arrived in California, I wrote my account of that experience. I don’t need to read it to remember the details forever lodged in my brain. But two years later, different things stand out. Mostly, I think of the people who loved us that week.