Metamorphosis

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? 

I don’t see many new pictures from Haven of Peace Academy since Rebekah left, and she was always the one who posted them. So when I find a new picture, I become like some sort of creepy stalker, magnifying it up close to carefully examine each person, each classroom, calculating how old she must be by now and wondering how he’s doing after losing his dad. 

I notice there are so many new teachers at HOPAC. And one day they’ll come across books in the library with my name Sharpied on the cover, and they’ll wonder who that person was. I owned that Haven and it owned me, and yet it has moved on a lot faster than I have. That’s always how it is.

I dream these dreams and think these thoughts, and life does a backbend. I stare into the mirror at myself from 20 years ago, in my early years in Tanzania. I’ve been in this place of loss and longing before. 

Those days I woke up from detailed dreams about American grocery stores. I watched the parade of Facebook pictures of October pumpkins and November turkeys and December lights. I looked around at my humid rain, potholed dirt roads, and spindly Christmas tree and pitied my party. 

I pined away for a different life. Now I’m living that life and pining away for the life I lost.

Is it just discontentment? Am I just restlessly looking for greener grass? 

Certainly that’s part of it. I am a mortal hunting for the immortal, and my heart will be restless until I find it.

But I’ve also discovered that history is what binds me to places. I have visited remarkable places like Slovenia, Turkey, and Kazakstan, but I don’t long for them; they don’t appear in my dreams. I’ve loved places for their unique beauty and experiences, but mostly, I miss history.

The places I long for hold a million memories. Ironically, most of them were ordinary. Lucy at my kitchen table, those radiant children at Haven of Peace Academy, the rain in the marketplace – these metamorphosed into extraordinary history. So much so that I wake up with tears on my face.  

Yes, I’ve lived in America before, but not in this city, house, church, school. Dropping into this new life has been just as jarring as moving to Tanzania in 2001. I’m discouraged to remember how long it took me to adjust, but then I’m hopeful – because I eventually did. 

This understanding propels me on in my new life in America. I am not patient; I rarely procrastinate; I like to get things done. But history cannot be manufactured magically. I must gain it through arduous forward steps, days that feel like drudgery and nights that dig up loss. My roots in Tanzania formed over the course of years, not months. But they did grow. Today’s unextraordinary moments will one day be my history. That’s why I carry on in hope. Ndiyo maana.