Category: Leaving Tanzania

The Longest Friends

On October 20, 2019

Last week was mid-term break (it’s not called “Fall Break” around here; we don’t have “Fall”) and we went to our favorite beach for four days with our friends Tim, Emily, Caleb, and Imani. For all six of us Medinas, they are some of our longest friends in Tanzania.

We met Tim and Emily in 2002, just a few months after Gil and I had arrived in Tanzania. But what really brought us together was that Tim and Emily adopted Caleb just months before we adopted Grace. Then, Tim and Emily adopted Imani just months before we adopted Josiah. Caleb and Imani were Grace and Josiah’s first friends, and now, their longest friends.

Tim and Emily don’t live in Dar es Salaam, so we don’t see them often–usually just a couple of times a year. They live in a remote part of Tanzania doing incredibly cool things. But for many years, whenever they were in town, they would stay with us, which meant that their kids and our kids did a lot of life together. In fact, for a few years, Caleb and Imani would join our kids at HOPAC whenever they visited.

Getting my children together with Caleb and Imani is always an amazing delight. Their personalities mesh perfectly; they enjoy each other; they bring out the best in each other. And their shared life stories make their relationships particularly special. And of course, Gil and I think their parents are pretty awesome too.

So last week was a magical four days with perfect weather, moonlit games of Capture the Flag, beach bonfires, giant succulent fish dinners, and laughter. Oh, so much laughter. It was Tim and Emily who first introduced us to this perfect beach many years ago, so it was fitting that we got to spend these days with them there–during what might be our last trip to this beach.

Reading Stronger Than Death

And since I’m feeling pretty nostalgic these days, knowing that these kind of times are coming to an end for us, I’ll take you on a trip down Memory Lane with the Medina kids’ friendship with Caleb and Imani.

Leaving.

By Amy Medina

On October 8, 2019

In Leaving Tanzania

We will be leaving Tanzania in July. Leaving and moving back to America.

Yeah, I’m kind of freaking out by seeing that in writing.

From the very beginning, way back in 2001, when people asked Gil and I how long we would stay on the mission field, the answer was always “indefinitely.” We always knew we were in it for the long haul. We wanted to be overseas missionaries. Period. That was our life goal. There was no end in sight.

Of course, that’s not to say we never wanted to leave. Anyone who has read this blog for a number of years knows that there were plenty of times I pined away for a different life. But we were long-haulers. And God always gave us good reasons to stay.

But as the years went by and we made more and more of a life for ourselves here, growing deep friendships and millions of memories and seeing the fruit of long-term ministry, the desire to leave disappeared.

Gil and I had decided, long ago, that when our eldest, Grace, started college, we would relocate back to the States. That always seemed so far in the future that we didn’t really give it much thought. But then our kids started growing up. And we realized, that as wonderful as their lives are here, that we are setting them up for some serious identity issues. They are Tanzanian-born and raised, yet they are culturally American. Well, sort of. More like, culturally international. Being at Haven of Peace Academy is a perfect environment for them–they are surrounded by kids who also have mixed-up cultural identities, taught by teachers from multiple countries, living in a sort of pseudo-world of people just like them. It’s awesome. But it’s a bubble that will eventually pop….and then what?

Schools like HOPAC work for a lot of missionary kids and third-culture kids, because those kids have a passport country to return to–a place that should, at least a little bit, feel like home. But our kids, though they have U.S. passports, have never really lived in the States. Their childhoods have been peppered with several months here and there of chaotic, wild-ride, living-out-of-a-suitcase visits to America. They have no idea what life there is really like, and it’s definitely not home.

We have our issues, America and me. It’s not like I’m totally thrilled that I’m handing my children an American identity. But like it or not, it is what it is. And Gil and I are hoping and praying that by starting this transition while our kids are still kids will help them in the long run.

So beginning a couple of years ago, Gil and I had hypothetical conversations about when would be a good time to relocate for the sake of our kids. Then, a year and a half ago, we were caught completely off guard by circumstances that would limit our time in Tanzania. There’s a lot I couldn’t write about, and I still need to be vague, but you might remember when Istarted writingabout the uncertainty we were facing about our future. In fact, there were times when we wondered if our departure would be imminent.

I recently found this in a school journal Josiah wrote last year. This entry was from a little more than a year ago:

So yeah. There’s that.

Since we were already thinking that we would need to relocate to the States sooner or later, the other issues we’ve been facing have pushed us to make the decision for sooner. Thankfully, we do still have this school year. We are incredibly grateful that God made a way for us to still be here.

For a while now, Gil and I have talked seriously, but hypothetically, about leaving next July. Let me tell you something–it is much, much easier to talk about a hard decision hypothetically than it is to actually make the decision. But by June, we had finally made the decision. Getting the words out of my mouth was excruciating; it felt like someone else was talking. I cried when we told our ministry partners. I cried when I told my parents. I cried when we told our missions committee. I cried when I told my staff. And now I’m crying as I write this, because now it’s in writing. Each time I say it–or write it–it becomes more real.

Gil and I will have lived in Tanzania for sixteen out of our nineteen years of marriage. I was twenty-four years old when we moved here–twenty-four! I am now almost forty-three. It feels like a lifetime. I don’t even recognize that twenty-four-year-old girl who moved here. So how can I possibly know who I will be in America?

We will be starting over, totally and completely. The two cities where we have ties are some of the most expensive in America, so it’s unlikely we will go there. We don’t know where we will live; we don’t know what we will do. We don’t know where our kids will go to school. It is very strange to think about how one year from now (which isn’t very long at all), my life will look absolutely, entirely different than it does at this moment.

I have a lot–a lot–of processing to do. Even though we’ve known since June, I couldn’t write about it publicly until the news had gone through all the proper channels first. But despite how difficult it is to write about this, I am relieved to finally be able to. This space is where I process. I’m glad you’ll be here too.

The Happiest Kind of Sadness: Portrait of a Friendship

By Amy Medina

On June 15, 2019

In Leaving Tanzania, Thoughts on Missions

“I heard you are going to the clinic today,” I texted my friend Alyssa. “Would you mind taking in my kid’s urine sample?”

“Sure,” she texted back. And then we tried to figure out how to get it to her.

“Oh! Mark’s at the bakery with his prayer group,” she remembered. “Just take it to him there.”

This is when you know you’ve hit the level of BFF: You can hand a man bag of pee at the bakery with his prayer group and feel no shame.

****

By the time our lives crossed with Mark and Alyssa Dunker and Ben and Lauren Snyder, it was about six years into our Tanzanian life, and Gil and I were friend-weary. Both couples, in fact, had contributed to that–they had come into our lives for about a year, and then left. Like so many before them; like so many would after.

But the Dunkers and the Snyders were different, because even though we assumed we would never see them again, they came back to Tanzania. We still had our guard up, though. Friendships between missionaries can go deep and strong in a short amount of time, but they tend to not last very long. Best not to get too attached.

But life just kept throwing the six of us together.

Being part of Reach Global, that made us automatic “family.” The unwritten rules of missionary culture state that mission teammates stick together. You might have barely met these people, but they’re the first ones you ask when you need someone to watch your kids. There’s an assumption you’ll get invited for holiday dinners. When you can’t figure out how to debone a chicken or get a driver’s license or kill the ticks on your dog, they are the first ones you call. You know, like family. Except in a desperate, lonely, out-of-options sort of way. You don’t really have a choice. You either depend on these people, or die.

But with the Dunkers and the Snyders, our relationships became more than mission family. Because of Haven of Peace Academy and Reach Tanzania Bible School, our lives started overlapping and boomeranging back on themselves. The paths of our lives became a mega-highway, intersecting and crossing and merging all into one.

****

Think about all of your various friends. You’ve got your church friends, and your Bible study friends. There’s your work friends, and your soccer mom friends. There’s your friends who are the parents of your kids’ friends, and your community friends, who you keep running into in the grocery store or the local pool.

Now imagine you have a friend who falls into every category. Every single one. And then imagine that you just happen to be living in a foreign country with that friend.

You get the idea.

****

We were at Ben and Lauren’s house when Josiah took his first steps. Lauren and I planned Haven of Peace Academy’s first graduation ceremony together. The four of us shared a common love for HOPAC, and a common passion to see it get bigger, better, see its impact increase. Lauren served as school counselor, Gil as chaplain, and Ben quickly climbed from math teacher to director. I joined the board of directors for several years, then Ben and his team hired me as elementary principal.

I drove Mark and Alyssa around Dar es Salaam their first week, and I was with them when they bought their car. Alyssa and I bonded when she spent hours picking lice out of my hair. They came to Tanzania to train pastors, which, besides HOPAC, was our other passion. So when Gil decided it was time to leave HOPAC and start training pastors, we now had a reason to stay in Tanzania.The Dunkers had started a Bible school, and we enthusiastically joined in.

We grew together with the Snyders by building Haven of Peace Academy. We grew together with the Dunkers by building Reach Tanzania Bible School. Somewhere along the way it became the six of us. Sure, we had common interests–missions, adoption, politics, theology, culture–but I think it was common life more than common interests that brought us together.

It’s now been ten years. These ten years have not been easy on any of our three families–at many times bordering on tragic. At first we relied on each other because it just made sense–these were the people closest to us. But go through that enough times, and one day you realize that you really know these people. And they really know you, and they still like you. And you think, Wow, this is something really special.

In tangible ways, but also in very real emotional and spiritual ways, they kept us here. We kept them here.

****

Have you ever been in an emotionally intense situation–a short-term missions trip or a week-long camp, where you didn’t know anybody but formed deep friendships quickly? There is something about being away from home together, living in close quarters and experiencing intense emotions together that bonds people for life.

Now take that kind of experience and multiply it by five hundred.

****

I sit here in my quiet living room and watch the darkening sky, listening to the crows bidding goodnight and the crickets waking up. This small space, with the weird pink tiled floor and the couches we could never make very comfortable, is alive with memories.

I see the Christmases. The plastic gangly tree in the corner, the stockings strung across the window, the stale smell of air conditioning pushing out the stifling heat seeking to consume us. Many are here in the room, many we love and consider family, but they come and go during different years like Ebenezer’s ghosts. But the Dunkers and the Snyders, they are the constant. They are here every year.

I see Friday nights with my floor strewn with popcorn and my throw pillows with holes in them and the sweat stains on my couch from dozens of teenagers. Ben and Lauren are here in the midst of them, Ben and Gil playing basketball with the boys outside the window, the girls chatting with Lauren and me. Sometimes the power goes out. And we sit here in the dark and laugh hysterically and sweat even more.

I see Lauren and me on one of those Friday nights, sitting in that corner on the weird pink tile floor, the swirl of teenagers laughing around us, while I tell her about my trip to see Lily. And about another little girl named Zawadi, who also needed a family.

I see Alyssa and Lauren and I, all three of us on the well-worn carpet, weeping in prayer over Zawadi. Weeks and months and years.

I see movies projected on the wall while my kids snuggle in with Aunt Alyssa or Uncle Ben. And finally, Zawadi is there too.

I see the Medina and Snyder and Dunker kids sitting on that tile floor with their striped melamine plates filled with homemade pizza. Don’t sit on the carpet! I holler every time. They don’t. They know better. Because I say it every time.

****

There was also the traveling.

We went all over Tanzania together–for language school, for vacation, for HOPAC trips–to Zanzibar, Moshi, Lushoto, Kigomboni, Arusha. And then out of the country–Kenya, South Africa, even Slovenia.

It wasn’t always all six of us, and it was rarely just the six of us, but again, the Snyders and the Dunkers and Medinas were the common denominator. Together we navigated airports and taxis and foreign languages. We caravanned in our mini-vans and would stop on the side of the road for kids to pee. We would always send each other text messages about speed traps.

We took students to camp and on spiritual retreats, sports weekends and senior trips. We went to mission conferences and HOPAC conferences. We went to the mountains for the week after Christmas–every single year.

We sat around beach campfires and laughed about ridiculous inside jokes. The guys played board games for seemingly every waking hour. We prayed and played with students side by side. We explored other missionary schools together, collecting ideas that led to passionate conversations late into the night, planning together how to make our school better.

Every place, every drive, every airport, we wracked up more memories. Sometimes bad ones, most of them good.

****

Their friendships snuck up on me.

I was so used to holding loosely to missionary friendships that at first I didn’t even recognize the bonds, thin as gossamer webs, slowly beginning to pull us together. Events that seem insignificant, if there are enough of them, one day start becoming quite significant indeed. Building memories, after enough time, becomes building history.

And one day, several years ago, I woke up and realized that the Snyders and the Dunkers and the Medinas weren’t just family. When you work and play and grow and cry alongside each other, for so many years, the description is closer to siblings than anything else.

The day I came to that realization was also the day I began to grieve. I was in deep; I was past the point of no return. What we had was quite extraordinary, but what we had would never last. When you move overseas, there should be flashing red lights around a huge sign that reads, “Beware: Make friendships at your own risk. They will be amazing, but they will break your heart.”

But it will be the happiest kind of sadness.

****

It didn’t matter how many ways that our roads had intersected. At some point, we always knew they would diverge. None of us belong to this country. It would be just a matter of time before those paths would start going in opposite directions. The Snyders are leaving Tanzania. It’s the end of an era.

Of course, the friendship won’t end; that would be inconceivable. But it won’t ever be the same.

So I am grieving. I guess I always have been. That’s the danger of loving something or someone too much in this overseas life. I guess that’s the danger of loving anything in this fleeting life. There is no constant. There is no permanency. Not on this side of the veil, anyway.

But we do sometimes get glimpses of eternity in this fleeting life–a perfect sunset, delicious ice cream, a belly-laugh with a spouse or child, a resonant symphony. Extraordinary friendship fits into that category. What’s temporary now will one day be forever. And it will be glorious. How grateful I am to have had that glimpse.

Lily’s “Support Tree” in first grade: Mom, Dad, Uncle Ben, Aunt Lauren, Uncle Mark, Aunt Alyssa

What Have I Done to My Children?

By Amy Medina

On March 1, 2019

In Leaving Tanzania, Liberia, Third Culture Kids

My family’s front porch in Liberia faced the ocean. A dirt road and a lagoon separated our house from where the sand began and the waves crashed, but it was enough of a beach house that the fridge rusted and my mom had to mop the salt off the floors every day.

Many hours would find me on the hammock on that front porch, one of the few places where my introverted tween awkwardness felt at home. It was a rough rope hammock, and I would sit sideways on it like a swing, my legs pushing against the cement railing on the porch. Liberian sunsets on that ocean, complete with silhouetted coconut palms, were as post-cardish as any honeymooner could ask for, but my clearest memories are of the rain.

Liberian rain was never some mamsy-pamsy sprinkling; it was a waterfall from the sky. The smell of that rain would engulf me, full of sea salt and warmth and growing things. And I would swing on my hammock, dreaming my young-girl dreams, and watch the lightning crack out of a dark sky and strike the expanse of my ocean.

We often miss the beauty of our childhoods while we are in the midst of it, much too focused on interpreting those best-friend-comments and science-project-scores to pay much attention, but the rain and the lightning and the swinging hammock was such a large, enveloping beauty that even in my twelve-year-old self-centeredness, I was able to feel something like awe.

Across that dirt road, in a house that was even closer to the ocean, lived friends. Their kids were around the same ages as my brother and I, and we spent many an afternoon canoeing on the swamp or trying to make a clubhouse in their attic, but it was so hot we could only each spend a few minutes in there at a time before we climbed down, gasping for breath. I practiced piano in their house every day, since they had a piano and we didn’t, and one at a time, we borrowed all of their Asterix and Tin Tin comics. “Bock, Bock!” I would holler at their screen door, because that’s what you said in Liberia when you came to someone’s door. They would always let me in.

We made a teepee out of palm branches and their daughter and me created fantasy lands for our Barbie dolls in the sand and the swamp and the forest around our homes. They were from Arizona, so at Christmas they introduced us to the tradition of paper bag lanterns–luminarias–which filled the humid night air with magic.

My third-culture-kid childhood was filled with so much beauty–both in the land itself, and in so many people who loved me and became like family, because that’s what happens when you find yourself thrust into a land with other foreigners who, like you, have no idea what they are doing.

I always wanted my own children to have a childhood like that.

Remarkably, they have. They already have more stamps in their passports than most people get in a lifetime. They’ve stood in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro and visited the Apartheid Museum in South Africa. They’ve fed giraffes in Kenya and watched baby sea turtles hatch and spent hundreds of hours in warm tropical oceans. And they have been deeply loved by Zimbabweans and Brits and Americans and Tanzanians who have enriched their lives with accents and cultures and family-bonds.

But as I dreamed that life for my kids, I failed to remember the grief.

It is easy to remember all the great stuff but naively think I would be able to protect my kids from all the hard stuff. Changing schools and relationships and countries and cultures several times in the course of a childhood–as extraordinary as it all sounds–is also excruciating.

Grace came home with a large drawing board in a plastic artist’s folder last week.

“It’s from my art teacher,” she said proudly. “He’s starting me on advanced art. He says that he’s going to give me a head’s start for IGCSE Art in 9th grade. I mean, if I’m here in 9th grade.”

If I’m here. Because we don’t know.

We had lunch with friends the other day, the ones who have felt like family for ten years. But they are leaving Tanzania this summer, and their daughter and Grace are an unbeatable duo–truly a sight to behold–on their basketball team. “You’ve got to come move near us and go to my school, and we can play basketball together!” she pleaded with Grace. Because it’s unthinkable to imagine living apart.

That same day we got more news: Another family we know and love will be leaving even sooner. I told the kids in the car; I didn’t want to look them in the eyes. Everyone was silent.

They are getting used to this.

And I wonder, What have I done to my children?

I remember how I wept when I found out that we wouldn’t be able to return to Liberia; wept for the loss of my home, wept for the country that was being destroyed by war. That family who lived on the other side of the road–after two years of water balloon fights and piano practices and luminarias and sharing every part of life–we separated into different worlds and we never saw them again.

I look into my children’s stony faces, steeling themselves against another loss; I hear the if I’m here in their voices and I remember my own childhood–the part I don’t like to remember. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” I’ll say without a moment’s hesitation. But is it fair to impose on them the pain that goes with it? Do I have the right to say to them, “This is going to hurt a whole lot, but it will be worth it?”

I guess that’s the thing about parenting–we make all these choices for these small people under our care, and they don’t get any say in it. We choose where they will live, how they will be educated, how many siblings they will have, who they will be friends with. None of this seems like a big deal when they are little and an extension of us, but then they get bigger and smarter and they start to realize that some of the choices we made for them have difficult repercussions. Our enthusiastic, It will be worth it! starts to sound more hollow, to them and to us, because the truth is, we really don’t know if it will be.

I’m realizing that as much as I want (and try) to write my kids’ stories for them, I really only get to make the basic outline. I can create the setting and even write in a bunch of the characters, but they control the perspective, which is really what makes or breaks a story. And ultimately, I must trust that there’s an Author who’s a whole lot bigger than I am, and who loves them a whole lot more than I do, who is doing most of the writing behind the scenes.