Thursday, May 31, 2012

Home is Everywhere the Heart Is


If you didn’t know it, I have come home. Specifically, I have left my new home and life in Botswana to return to a new life and home in my old town of Eureka, California.  It wasn’t an easy decision to do this, but there were family concerns that pushed me in this direction. When I was then also offered a great job as the Executive Director of the Area One Agency on Aging, a post that has been vacant since last fall, I felt it was time to head west. My chest hurt so badly and I couldn’t stop crying as the driver from my workplace drove me the hour north to the Peace Corps office in Gaborone.  He must have thought I was nuts.  Gratefully, the staff at the Peace Corps office treated me kindly and with compassion and while they were sad to see me go, they supported me in my decision and that made all I was feeling at the time a bit more tolerable.

My PCV friends and my host family were all incredibly supportive and kind, as were one or two very special friends who I miss terribly. I want to thank everyone who has been reading my blog during my adventure and who has sent me cards, emails, boxes and obviously kind thoughts throughout the duration. I could not have managed without even one of those emails, cards, boxes or thoughts and I thank you all. I will probably continue to post blogs as I sort out my experiences over the last few months which I was unable to post due to lack of a computer.  I need to do this for myself and will be happy to have any readers along for the ride.

 It is now exactly almost to the minute seven days since my plane touched down in San Francisco after a 30 hour trip from Gaborone, Botswana.  In the last seven days I have: bought a smart phone, a smarter car (okay that has a 5 year loan involved), visited my step mother, traveled 150 miles in SF Bay Area Memorial Day stop and go traffic (okay, not for the entire time, but most of it) with my mom to visit my sister in law and see my niece in a play, travelled a further 150 miles to my home town to see my two sisters, and one of their families (husband and my two nieces), moved into my BFF and family’s house temporarily after snagging some stuff stored at my sisters, signed up for my old gym, did the initial hiring paperwork at my new job,  searched for and found an apartment, saw my old boy friend, gotten a post office box, mailed a package to Botswana, visited my tenants and three different neighbors from the hood, bought living room furniture, run into various old friends, tried new restaurants and rediscovered old ones, been fed and loved by friends and family, received a big box from my brother with all my business affairs neatly returned to me…and who knows what else….

In the next day, I will get a massage, go to my Arcata Rotary meeting, see my doggie Nevada, have a lunch business meeting at the Ingomar, then dine there again for dinner (luckily they have nice food and it was not to be avoided, although extravagent compared to my recent lifestyle).  Saturday I will move some stuff into my new apartment, go rowing on the Bay, go back to the gym to learn my new workout, and go to Arts Alive in Eureka. Sunday is a day of rest before I start my job officially on Monday.

Under this very thick layer of busi-ness my psyche is grappling with the changes and how easily one can physically go from a place like that to a place like this.  My heart is still so strongly tied to the work I was doing there and the people I grew to know and even love and I don’t want to lose hold of my dear friends, my colleagues and my host family there who were all so terrific to me.  I refuse to buy a television until after the elections at least. I am so selfish of my own quiet time and will need it more than ever as I process my experiences of the last 14 months.

I don’t want it to all become a blur. I know it won’t, but every day I spend driving a car and not sweating on a bus takes me further away from the reality of that experience. I eagerly await mail of any kind from my home there, and am hoping the teenage girls I left behind will hold up their end of writing to me, so I can hold up my end of being a support to them as they move through their tricky and challenging lives.

I wait for news about the well my Rotary clubs are working on there, and know I will need to tenderly “harass” my Rotary friends that side to keep them moving forward against the bureaucracy that is Botswana governmental offices.

I eagerly read my Bots 10 family’s facebook postings, hoping all is well in their world.  I hold my breath awaiting word that the cats, Sisi, Pudi, and Makibikibi have found their ways to their new homes and haven’t in the mean time totally driven my friend Tija, who is fostering them, to distraction or worse.

I have pictures of people in my mind and heart that I can flip through whenever I need to help me remember the good times I had in Botswana.  These are the same pictures that will help me plan my trip back to that land that was a new home for me and now always will be.

I am still the person I was before I left the US in March 2011. And yet, I am so not that same person.  My PC friends know, or will know sometime soon, what I am saying.  And I guess the rest of you will know that too.  Thanks again for taking this journey with me.  Ke tla go bona. Salang Sentle ditsala tsa me.

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