Tag: Leaving Tanzania Page 4 of 5

Letting Go of All the Things

On March 8, 2020

When I was seven, my family left Liberia after our first two years of service. At the time, my parents had no intention of returning, so we didn’t leave anything in storage. All of our possessions that couldn’t fit into several suitcases had to be sold or given away.

I had a set of beautiful Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. But I didn’t play with them much, so I reluctantly agreed with my mom that we could give them away to my friends Maria and Elisabeth. One day during our last week in Liberia, she sent me off to walk the half-mile to my friends’ house with the dolls in my arms, a knot in my stomach, and a lump in my throat.

I clearly remember that walk on the red dusty ELWA compound road, the ocean breeze whistling alongside me. I got about halfway there and my feet stopped moving. I burst into tears, turned around, and ran all the way back home.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share, but I couldn’t bear to part with anything that held memories for me. As a child I carefully saved and filed schoolwork, notes from friends, programs from drama performances. Just about any physical item that ended up in my bedroom held emotional significance for me.

Living an overseas life as an adult got a lot of this tendency out of my system. When you live a life where every few years, you must pack up all of your possessions into 12 boxes, you learn to not get too attached to stuff. In fact, now I would say that I am what they call a minimalist–clutter and excess stuff drives me crazy. My children know that if you don’t put your stuff away where it belongs, Mom might just come along and throw it away. So be careful.

But still, there’s that part of me from my youth that attaches memories to objects. And now that I am preparing to move continents once again, I am feeling like that little seven-year-old who didn’t want to give away Raggedy Ann and Andy. Anything that doesn’t fit into a suitcase can’t come to America with us. And since we moved here first in 2001, we have a lot of things that we’ve owned for a very long time.

My children played on that rug as toddlers. Those throw pillows have been mended from the days when dozens of teenagers used them in pillow fights. Those dishes, as simple and plain as they are, have fed hundreds of beloved guests. That table–the one that bears the scars of baby Josiah’s spoon-banging–that table has seen our children raised.

The vultures are already circling around our stuff. I use the term “vulture” affectionately, because I’ve been one myself. I know how this works. When you visit a friend, and you like their furniture, just make a mental note of it. One day they’ll leave and you’ll want to be the first one to call dibs. Missionaries are great at recycling. And not just missionaries, of course. Back in September, I told a local friend we will be leaving in July. She wept. But the very next day, she told me the list of our furniture she wants to buy.

We’ve started selling stuff, but right now it’s just things we aren’t currently using. Everyone is waiting for “The Spreadsheet”–the one we will send out to all of our contacts in Tanzania with a list of everything we’re selling. People keep asking for it, but I can’t bring myself to do it yet. I know when I see all of our household items disappearing, it will feel like chunks of memories go with them.

It’s silly, actually. I mean, I’ve never even really liked our living room set; it’s not very comfortable. I could really use some new towels. All the elastic is gone from our sheets. I can buy back the exact same dishes in America. Maybe it’s just that losing these physical objects is tangible evidence of the loss of a much less tangible, but far more important life.

In the end, if I think rationally about it, I’m thankful that this overseas life has forced me to love possessions less. Loosening my grip on earthly things–things that will one day be destroyed anyway–has pressed me to set my mind on things above.

That day when I was seven, my mom wisely didn’t force me to walk the dolls back to my friends’ house. Yet, later on, they still quietly disappeared. Lo and behold, I didn’t miss them. Sometimes we just need that grip loosened in order to discover that we really don’t need the things we cling to. Not as much as we thought we did.

Our home for the past 10 years.

If you were Mary and I was Martha, I would totally be ticked off at you.

By Amy Medina

On January 19, 2020

In Other

I am all about getting the job done. Meet the deadline. Before the deadline, preferably. Do your duty. Follow the rules. Don’t procrastinate. Fix the problem. A job isn’t worth doing unless it’s done well.

Some people seek thrills by jumping out of planes or riding roller coasters. I get dopamine hits from crossing things off of lists.

This makes me an excellent employee. A pretty good principal. A mom whose is not very fun, but whose kids’ teeth are brushed and bellies are fully of vegetables. A Christian who reads her Bible just about every day…..but will often choose the task that needs her instead of the person who needs her.

I hate sitting back and waiting when there’s something productive that can be done. Which means that I am right smack dab in the middle of a point in life that is driving me crazy. Oh, don’t get me wrong–I am plenty busy. The problem is that just about every aspect of my future is an unknown right now. Five months from now, I will be jobless and homeless. Five stinkin’ months, People. This is not okay with me.

I can’t visualize where I will be and what I will be doing and what will be happening with my children because I don’t know. And I can’t know. Though Gil and I are dutifully researching and making inquiries and sending resumes, there’s not a lot of places–especially schools–that hire people eight months out.

Which means I have to wait. I hate waiting. I’d rather seize control of my life and get the job done. Make a plan. Get all the things crossed off my list. Come on, let’s get moving here!

As Jesus as and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed–or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

In my case, instead of complaining about my sister, I’m complaining about my God. Come on, God, get it together! We’re working hard here, trying to figure out our life. We’re ready for an answer, a plan. Our lives are dedicated to you, after all. We’re all about serving you. So why aren’t you helping us?

Sheesh. It sounds bad when I put it that way.

Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

Distracted. All of my planning and hard work and productivity are just distractions? Seriously? I’m not feeling very affirmed here, God.

But yes. I am distracted. The One Thing most important to me is Having a Plan. The One Thing most important to Jesus is that I sit at his feet and listen to him. Sitting? Listening? When there’s so much to do? Argh. I don’t like this.

Recently, in the midst of my impatience with the lack of control I have over my future, a hymn came to me from my childhood. I most certainly was bored with this one as a kid, with its thys and thines and slow plodding cadence. But it lodged in my brain and now? I bring it to mind almost every day.

Have Thine own way, Lord

Have Thine own way

Thou art the potter, I am the clay

Mold me and make me after Thy will

While I am waiting yielded and still

You know what I found out? The writer of that hymn, Adelaide Pollard, wrote those words while frustrated by her attempts to raise support to be a missionary in Africa. How do you like that?

Yielded and still. Were you a Martha, Adelaide? Because waiting while “yielded and still” sounds like a pretty good goal for me right now. I’ll add it to my list.

Hume Lake, CA, July 2019 (Gil Medina)

Still Looking for That Better Country

By Amy Medina

On December 21, 2019

In Other

I’ve been a foreigner for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to live as a citizen.

It’s now normal for me to stick out in a crowd, to get gawks, stares. Every two years, I apply for expensive visas for permission to live in Tanzania. Even though I’ve lived here sixteen years, I’ve never voted in a Tanzanian election, or even felt like I have a right to a political opinion. I’ve never owned a house. I know that just about everything I own will one day be owned by someone else, so I better not get attached to it. I have the uncomfortable feeling that some of those around me are in awe of my foreignness and unnecessarily defer to me, but others resent my very presence in their country.

Either way, I am an outsider.

It’s become so normal that sometimes I forget how exhausting it is to live as a foreigner. It’s like playing a card game, every day, where you keep discovering new rules that everyone understands except you. Just when you think you’ve finally got it all figured out–surprise! You don’t. And you find yourself feeling like a two-year-old or a hard-hearted wretch or just a plain idiot.

As I think about the new life ahead of me–living as a citizen in a country that technically is my own, sometimes I’m terrified; sometimes I’m grief-stricken, but other times I’m excited. Yes, my relationship with America is complicated, but the lure of the American dream is strong. We can settle down and put down roots. Maybe for the first time in my life, I can own a house! I can plant trees and watch them grow with my children. I won’t have to worry about visas anymore. I won’t stand out in a crowd.

As much as I love living overseas, there’s a part of me that aches for permanency, normalcy, security. They are feelings I have stuffed down and suppressed for most of my adult life. Now that there’s a possibility of fulfilling them, they have risen to the surface.

I never realized how much I longed for a homeland until it was finally at my fingertips.

The appeal is strong. Which is exactly why I must push back against that feeling and remind myself that America was never meant to be my homeland. I can’t put my hope in a country–even the richest, most powerful country in the world.

I could buy a house, and it could burn down. I could put down roots, and then lose a job. I could save for kids’ college, and the economy could collapse. I could fit in–but as a Christ-follower, am I supposed to?

If I give into the temptation of allowing America to feel too much like home, to become comfortable, secure, rooted, then what happens when obeying God challenges that comfort? What happens when I need to stand for something that might sacrifice the personal kingdom I built for myself?

And haven’t I always said, all these years, that one of the best parts of living overseas is how it reminds me that my real home is in heaven? So why would I want to give in to a desire that tells me my home is in America?

In the most famous biblical chapter on faith, there’s a key line: The Faithful didn’t get the homeland they longed for. They did not receive what was promised.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Kind of flies in the face of the American dream, doesn’t it? The people in Hebrews 11 are our pillars of faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. They were strangers, exiles, nomads. They recognized that their homeland was not on this earth.

Those who never found a home on this earth are celebrated as our faith-heroes.

There’s no reason why God would want me to feel at home in this world. I keep craving it; I pursue it; seek after it….but it’s a misplaced longing. In fact, if I do feel too much at home, then something is wrong. Because that desire was never meant to be fulfilled on this side of eternity.

Which is why, even in America, I will need to remind myself tokeep living like a missionary.

Of course, it won’t be wrong for me to buy a house and plant trees, or vote, or teach my children the Pledge of Allegiance. I just must be careful to remember where my true allegiance lies. Because my home will never be found on this earth.

Pamoja Week at HOPAC Actually Came Out of Disunity

By Amy Medina

On November 17, 2019

In Other

Pamoja Week at Haven of Peace Academy actually came out of disunity.

When missionaries move overseas, they expect to learn to navigate the new culture of their host country. What they don’t usually expect is that they will also need to learn to navigate the cultures of other missionaries.

Sometimes this is hilarious. For example, I have fond memories with British or South African friends as we laughed ourselves senseless over our cultures’ varying uses of terms such as “hooter,” “fanny pack,” and “shag rug.” Depending on where you are from, you may be horrified that I just wrote such words on my blog.

Other times are not so funny. Like, for example, when you are trying to run an international school, and the Brits and the Americans have very different ideas of what makes a good school. One prominent example was when my friend Lauren (also an American) and I went to the (British) high school principal and told him that we wanted to plan a graduation ceremony for the graduating seniors. He looked at us as if we had just said we wanted to take the students on a trip to the moon. Because in England, there are no high school graduation ceremonies. Students don’t graduate–they just pass or not pass exams.

And that was just a small conflict. Back around 2004, the debate over American versus British curriculum almost made the school implode. It was like the Revolutionary War all over again, this time in Tanzania.

So anyway. Back to Pamoja Week. About 10 years ago, Gil and I took over the high school Student Council. Another (American) teacher had started it a couple of years previously, but hadn’t gotten very far because the concept of Student Council is also very American, and the British principal didn’t know what to do with it.

But when Gil and I took over, the high school principal just happened to also be American. Woohoo! (This is another important thing for missionaries to learn: You’ll eventually get your way if you just wait long enough for everyone else to leave.) So, great. We got Student Council off with a bang. And what does every good American Student Council plan? Spirit Week, of course!

Our American high school principal immediately agreed: Of course we could do Spirit Week! Why not? Except that the elementary school principal was British. And he had never heard of Spirit Week. His interpretation was Holy Spirit Week (after all, HOPAC is a Christian school), so down in elementary school, they had a special emphasis on the Fruits of the Spirit that week. He was fairly disturbed that up in high school we were dressing up with our clothes on backwards and throwing marshmallows at students’ peanut-butter faces. Because in England, you don’t have fun at school. (Hey–their words, not mine.)

This caused some–ahem–interesting discussions. Gil and I, in our stubborn American-ness, couldn’t understand why we couldn’t do it our way. The right way, of course.

It all came to a head during a rather tense “discussion,” when Kandyl Kotta, the Student Council president (who was thankfully neither American nor British, but Tanzanian), politely told off all the adults in the room. She basically told us we needed to get a hold of ourselves and act like adults.

Yeah, we were pretty ashamed of ourselves.

It was also Kandyl who suggested that we change the name of Spirit Week, since the name itself was causing a lot of confusion. We brainstormed ideas, but in the end, it was Kandyl herself who suggested the winner: Pamoja Week. Pamoja is the Swahili word for together.

And so, like so many other things at Haven of Peace Academy, Pamoja Week became unique to HOPAC. At first, Gil and I tried to stuff it into the American “Spirit Week” box by ending the week with a “homecoming” type event with a big soccer game on Friday night. Except, try as we might, we never could get a team to come play us for a night game. Instead, a couple of years later, the crowning event of Pamoja Week became International Day, an event that had already been in place since the school’s inception. They fused together perfectly.

Ten years later, how fitting that the week that caused so much division is now a celebration of our togetherness. How fitting that the week we celebrate our togetherness ends in a day where we celebrate our unity in diversity.

Last week, the Medina family celebrated our last Pamoja Week and International Day. With us leaving, I’m worried that the story behind it will be forgotten. Which is why I wrote it down today.

Pamoja Week and International Day, 2019

I taught her in fifth and sixth grade! AHH! It was so awesome to have her there!

And more nostalgia….The Medina family at International Day Over the Years (in no particular order)

Lasts

By Amy Medina

On November 10, 2019

In Other

The grief of leaving hits me at odd times.

Josiah just turned twelve and got bacon for his birthday. He was thrilled. And I was wistfully sad to think about how this is the last birthday where anyone will be excited to receive bacon or Pringles or Coco Pops as birthday presents.

There are times when leaving feels like a relief. My job is stressful, often, these days. I am unfailingly determined to finish well, to complete the projects I started, to invest all that I can into this school I adore. People ask me what I want to do next year and I say, I really just want to plant flowers and get to know my neighbors. Do I have to get a job? Because I am tired.

But then I sit here in my office at school, and see the frangipani tree blooming outside my window, and the football games going on behind it. In a few minutes I will go out to watch Lily’s game, and I will see her play with girls she has grown up with, many of them with her skin tone and all of them with a million shared memories. I’ll sit with the other moms and we’ll cheer them on with the expanse of the Indian Ocean as our backdrop, sweating together underneath the wet-blanket of November mugginess.

I relish this place, this moment, this feeling. And I grieve.

Sure, this won’t be my last football tournament. But next time it will be called soccer, and I’ll be surrounded by people I don’t know but who know each other and have their own sub-cultures and millions of shared memories that don’t include me. I’ll have Costco granola bars and fruit snacks in my bag instead of home-popped popcorn; I’ll probably be wearing a jacket. I won’t be known; I will be another new face, the one with the odd story of living half her life in Africa.

Everything is a Last this year. The last time I’ll get to ignore Halloween. The last fourth Thursday in November that will be a work day; the last Thanksgiving I’ll celebrate on a Sunday. The last time I’ll hack up a pumpkin to make pie (because who wants to do that when you have Costco???). The last air conditioned Christmas.

Each day is a Last Day. I think of that often–Today is the last November 9th I will experience here. This week is our last Pamoja Week. Our last International Day will be this Friday. It will be Number 16 for us. How will I live my life without International Day? I guess the same way that I’ve lived sixteen Thanksgivings without celebrating on the fourth Thursday of November. Part of my heart has always been somewhere else. But I am used to that by now.

What’s ironic is that in August of 2012, I wrote a post called “The Year of Lasts.” It was the beginning of Gil’s last year as chaplain at HOPAC. We knew we would be returning to Tanzania after a year, but our role at Haven of Peace Academy would be as parents only. After spending ten years of our lives breathing and bleeding HOPAC, we were moving on. I had no intention of returning to be on staff and I grieved leaving that life. Three years later, when the way opened widely for me to return, it totally took me by surprise. So in these Lasts, I rejoice in the icing on the cake–that I got to come back and work at HOPAC for three more years that I never thought I would get.

So I guess I need to be reminded that last is not always Last. Our God is surprising. After years and years of saying good-byes that I thought would be permanent–and weren’t–I’ve learned instead to say, “See you later. The world is small.”

There’s a blessing, though, in knowing that each day is a Last. Many don’t get that privilege–loss and change often come suddenly, without a chance to say good-bye, to finish well, to savor the Lasts. So the grief reminds me to slow down and savor what I do have today. Because that’s how I should be living my life anyway.