I volunteer weekly at an after-school program for disadvantaged kids, and I went to the banquet that celebrated this ministry’s 20 year anniversary.
We watched a video montage of how the ministry has expanded over the years. We listened to young people, now grown up, whose lives were changed because of the investment in them.
It was a lovely evening. But when I got to my car afterwards, I wept. I enjoy being a part of this ministry, but the banquet reminded me that I am a newcomer; I know nothing of the history of two decades. And all I could think about was how I had left behind 20 years of history in Tanzania.
I did not anticipate the lostness that comes with starting life over again.
There’s an old-fashioned bell on the wall in Haven of Peace Academy’s office building. We would ring it on special occasions, like when we recruited a new teacher or got a batch of approved work permits, or when Zawadi was finally adopted.
The moment I walked into that building on Monday afternoon, June 7th, after fourteen months of being away, my friend Trudie saw me and ran over and rang that bell. The faces of old friends appeared out of office doors and some clapped and some cheered and all of them surrounded me at once. They engulfed me with love and I held onto them for dear life, and I broke down with joy and sorrow and relief and a whole lot of jetlag. For fourteen months I had longed for this moment and not known if it would ever come. But it did.
What was it like to go back? It felt like Lucy going through the wardrobe, like Harry passing through Platform 9 ¾. I got off the plane and was in a different universe, one that instantly felt very familiar, like no time at all had passed.
June in Dar es Salaam is technically winter, but my face was abruptly shiny again from the humidity. My ankles were perpetually itchy from mosquito bites. Monkeys danced on the roof in the mornings, I ate rice and beans for lunch, I haggled over taxi prices, and I hollered for the house guard when the water pump stopped working. My duffle bag arrived with a large rip, and I fretted over finding a needle and thread until it dawned on me, Duh, I’m in Dar. I can walk out the gate and find a tailor who will fix it up good as new, licketly split. And so I did.
I have spent the last fourteen months trying to force my soul into ill-fitting clothes, so being back felt ordinary and effortless and right.
All year, we’ve been planning a family trip back to Tanzania in June–the precise window of time when our kids’ new school would be finished and Haven of Peace Academy would still be in session. We had such a traumatic ending last March. All year, our family has talked about going back and finishing better.
But U.S. immigration won’t let us leave the country with Johnny. So that means Grace, Lily, and I will still go to Tanzania this June–only half of us. I’m excited to go, but this is not what I wanted. So I lament.
Yet this isn’t my first struggle with U.S. immigration. It’s been going on for fifteen years.
I think part of the reason why I have compassion for immigrants is because I have four of them in my family. Maybe this is news to some, but children adopted internationally by Americans don’t automatically become U.S. citizens. In the fifteen years I’ve had my children, I’ve often been prevented from bringing them into the United States. And now I’m being prevented from taking one out.
This has been a theme of our lives. Here’s one example (of many that could be told):
I still remember the day so clearly: Josiah was two years old. By this time, he had been in our home since he was nine months old and had just been officially adopted. In order to start his U.S. citizenship process, he had to be in our custody for two years. Since we hadn’t met that mark yet, if we wanted to visit the States, we needed to get him a tourist visa.
Grace, who is 15, told me about a conversation she had with an old friend. “She asked me how my year had been going,” Grace said. “And I told her about all the new things in my life and the things that have changed.” Suddenly her face crumpled. “And I realized, I’ve been through a lot, haven’t I?”
Yes, my girl, you have been through a lot.
The earth has made its way around the entirety of the sun since last March, which means we are headed towards all the anniversaries. March 13–the last day I was on campus with my students. March 19–the day we were told we had to leave. March 25–the day we left Tanzania. The emotional impact of each of those days left a yawning hole that has yet to be filled.
I don’t like remembering it. I’ve related the story of March 2020 to friends several times; I’ve re-read the account I wrote. It doesn’t take much to pull me back into the grief and bewilderment and shock all over again. I wonder how long it will take before I can think about it without feeling it.
I thought I was doing fine, and then I watched The Office episode in Season 7 when Michael leaves, and found tears leaking out of my eyes all over the place. And Gil looked at me bewildered, and I choked, “I had to say goodbye to an office too!” So I guess I’m not always doing fine.
I didn’t just inhabit Tanzania; it inhabited me. The humidity settled in my hair, frizzing it out, it dwelt in my skin; I never needed lotion. The tropical sun beat down on me most days of the year; I look at my wrists and neck now, places I didn’t regularly wear sunscreen, and I see that my skin has aged more than my 44 years deem appropriate. My legs and feet were accustomed to sandals and skirts almost every day, not jeans and socks like today. The words I spoke were different–not just when I used Swahili, but my English vocabulary too. My muscles were trained in different patterns; the rough ground I walked on, the way I drove, my routine in the grocery store.
I suppose it’s understandable, then, why I have felt disoriented for so long. My body was yanked out of Tanzania, but for a long while, Tanzania still dwelt in me. It’s not just my mind that has needed reorienting, but my body as well.
In Tanzania, I spent many hours at my tiny kitchen sink, washing dishes. I would stare out the screened window into our backyard watching the dogs and the crows and the occasional chicken. There wasn’t much of a view, mostly just the top of the underground water tank and a cement wall that surrounded the yard. But fuchsia bougainvillea grew on that wall, and several coconut trees towered behind it, their papery leaves rustling in the wind.
It was such a very, very familiar sight to me for many years. I looked out that window when Josiah was two years old, whining at my knee, and when he was twelve years old, making a peanut butter sandwich next to me. Last year, I can remember looking out that window and wondering what it would be like to not look out of it anymore. It was hard to imagine.
My life in Tanzania went on for so long that for a long time, I couldn’t visualize the end of it. Life beyond Tanzania seemed like a fuzzy black hole, out of focus.
