Today, March 25th, is five years since I left Tanzania. Tomorrow will be five years since I’ve been back in the States.
A few weeks ago, I took our dog Mzungu out for a walk at night because it rained all day and when it is raining, he refuses to go outside to do his business unless he is on a leash on a walk. I didn’t want to bother with both the leash and an umbrella, so I figured we’d be quick and I wouldn’t get too wet.
We had an incredibly dry winter in Southern California. It had been months and months since it really rained here, so my senses soaked in the rain just like the thirsty earth. The dog did what he needed to do, but I found myself still walking.
The dark streets were empty and the windows glowed warm, and the rain dripped off my hair into my eyes and seeped through my jacket, but I kept walking.
And I walked and I remembered. I wasn’t thinking at all about Africa, and then suddenly I was. Rain, in my memories, is synonymous with Africa.
I remembered walking home from school in Liberia when the dusty red roads would turn into muddy red rivers and my flip-flops would splatter red on the backs of my legs. Thunder would roar around me and lightning would crack onto the ocean and I would twirl and dance in the warmth and power engulfing me.
I remembered my children in Tanzania, shoving on their rainboots and charging outside, returning sopping and breathless and pleading for hot chocolate (though it couldn’t possibly have been under 80 degrees).
Some months it rained so often that I told teachers to send their kids out for recess in the rain unless it was pouring, and I remembered their plastered hair and shining faces, piles of shoes outside each classroom.
I rarely bothered with an umbrella in Africa. The rain was either too light and I knew I would dry off quickly, or it was too strong and an umbrella would be useless anyway.
Sleeping to the sound of rain on a tin roof. Wet feet in sandals. Dark skies, temperamental ocean waves. Crystals dripping off hibiscus petals.
And now it’s been five years. It’s strange how for so many years I couldn’t see the end to living in Africa, and now all of a sudden, it’s been five years since I left.
So as I walked and remembered, the wetness from my eyes mingled with the wetness from the sky. I miss Africa. Yet the memories are latent now. They don’t sit on my chest and keep me from breathing. It feels like a long time ago, and that makes me sad. I don’t think of it every day anymore, and that makes me sad.
I was talking to a friend who returned from serving overseas a couple of years after I did. She was fresh in the grief of leaving the place she loved, and I assured her that it would eventually be okay – things would get better. She asked me: Did it really get better, or did you just get used to it?
I’ve thought about that question for a long while. Because those losses I felt so acutely at the beginning – the loss of community, the loss of a life that overflowed with meaning and purpose, curiosity and discovery – those things have not been replaced. I have grown content with dimmer substitutes instead. I’ve just gotten used to it.
Of course, nostalgia has a way of bringing to the surface only the sweetness while the bitter seems fuzzy. Part of the reason that African rain was so sweet was because the heat was so oppressive. Driving and sleeping and cooking and communicating are infinitely easier in America. I love that my house has no bugs in it. I love being able to walk my neighborhood at night and feel safe.
Yet even in these perks, there is a sense of loss. Being challenged daily, realizing I could do more and be more than I originally thought I was capable of, seeing tangible results of sanctification in my heart – those African inconveniences turned out to be quite convenient indeed.
Perhaps this is why, even after five years back in my passport country, I still often feel like I am floating on the outside of things. I hover here – my body planted firmly in one country, my soul forever existing in divided loyalty. Yet it’s worth it. I wouldn’t change it for anything.
