ch-ch-changes...

While I was in Africa, I received an email from a good friend of mine expressing his concerns that I would return from Africa a completely different person.

a young woman from Macedonia went to Calcutta one day and we now know her as Mother Teresa. while my Catholicism supports any growth in church activities, i worked too hard to make you unrespectable.

I laughed when I got the message last week.  This friend and I have known each other for ten years and while working together, engaged in more than our fair share of shenanigans.  Late nights, chicken tenders at a local diner, and coffee breaks in the middle of the afternoon were par for the course while we were working together.  And since I've gotten older, I have certainly cut back on my formerly wild ways and his email got me thinking -- I feel like a different person now that I am back.  But how I am different?

Besides the monumental decision to look for a legal job that is more fulfilling, I think I am still figuring the rest out.  There are small things I am trying to be more cognizant of - I noticed that in the last week, I've watched carefully what I eat (not necessarily calories but quantity) and what I spend.  With a major life change on the way, I realized it is time to start paying closer attention to my cash flow.  I am trying to be more aware of my language and replacing my go-to "mother f***er" with the less offensive "mother of pearl." I am not sure where "mother of pearl" comes from and I am pretty sure it may mean that I am transforming into a 75-year-old woman.  I noticed I am deleting, without reading these emails, I receive on a near daily basis from a variety of stores, enticing me with free shipping and percentages off.  I seem to have lost my taste for shopping, although I am quite confident it will return, but when it does, it will probably be more Old Navy, less Nordstrom.

There is a lot of momentum that follows a life-changing experience.  Part of me wants to tear through my apartment and donate every article of clothing I have not worn in the last six months. But I know myself and those types of impulse decisions I will likely regret.  What I am focused on is learning how to weave what I learned into my daily life, in a way that reminds me of my experiences without becoming unrecognizable to those who know me best.  It has been a little tricky but I am trying to make it work.  Stay tuned.

singing, with a little bit of dancing

last night, one of my trip mates posted a video of my team singing and dancing a Swati song that some members of our community taught us.  While the video is hilarious (primarily due to the completely lack of rhythm of one teammate), it actually represents an important point in my trip.  The lyrics of the chorus are:

There's no one, there's no one like Jesus
There's no one, there's no one like Him.
There's no one, there's no one like Jesus
There's no one, there's no one like Him.

Then we sing in siSwati about looking for someone like Jesus but always coming up empty.  Please don't expect me to write the siSwati part - I would butcher a beautiful language.

If you had asked me a few months ago, whether I would ever sing a Bible school song like that in public, I would have rolled my eyes.  I was raised Irish Catholic and while we are as devout as they come, our relationship with God tends to be more formal and private.  Every Sunday night, when someone starts clapping during Mass, I always think of a Catholic friend of mine who cringes at the sound of clapping: "We are Catholic! We don't clap in Church. We sit, kneel, and stand. That's it." He will then mutter something about a "hippie mass."  Part of me loves the more open and relaxed atmosphere of Sunday evening Mass, but it took a while for me to get there.  Catholic Mass is rather regimented and probably seems quite strange to a newcomer.  Yes, we do sit, kneel, and stand and it can be tough to catch on.

I think that is why I was surprised on my first day when a swarm of children singing (and dancing) to "Jesus Loves Me" had me in tears. It was far from what I was used to but it was so beautiful and pure and innocent.  And that next night, I felt that same purity and innocence (and a sizeable amount of amusement) as we sang for our group.  I realized that faith and religion takes many forms, even among Christians.  We may be united in some fundamental beliefs but can diverge rather quickly and then allow ourselves to be defined by differences, rather than similarities.  Maybe all it takes is one chorus of "Jesus Loves Me" to bring us all back together.

buying bricks

On my first day serving in the community of Swaziland, a small group of us went to visit a gogo (grandmother) whose house had burned down a few weeks before.  We picked her up in our combi, along with her neighbor who had taken her in.  We drove along bumpy roads, mentally preparing ourselves for what we were about to see.  On our drive from the hotel to our church, we were still figuring out the world around us.  The country definitely looked poor and the children we passed on the street, though full of smiles and excitedly waving at us, were dressed in mismatched outfits. 

We got out of the van and walked slowly around the site of the gogo's house.  A structure barely my height was all that was left - all of her possessions were destroyed, the roof was gone, and the whole area smelled like smoke and fire.  She sat down on a rock outside her house, holding hands with her neighbor.  We took pictures, not because we wanted to remember the scene - I am quite confident I will never forget the scene and did not require photos to recall the images to my mind.  We had with us Paula, a staff member from the organization that had brought us to Africa and she was immediately trying to come up with ways for us to help.  The pictures were necessary for her to appeal to the organization for funds. 

Surveying the damage brought tears to my eyes. My emotions took over as we gathered around the gogo and her neighbor and prayed with them.  Prayers of strength for the gogo, prayers of gratitude for the neighbor who had offered the gogo and her granddaughter a place to stay and prayers of hope that we could somehow help. 

Throughout the rest of my trip, I saw more heartache and pain but I never forgot the image of the gogo, holding onto her neighbor, and considering all she had lost.  I emailed Paula upon my return home and said, "How can I help?" She returned my email today and informed that the organization was working with the community to rebuild the gogo's home. She told me I could donate funds directly to the effort if I wished.

I plan to write a check as soon as I get home tonight.  I am lucky that this terrible job of which I complain allows me the financial freedom to do that.  That used to be enough - I used to be content to just "throw money at problems" and hope they go away.  While I preferred action, action from me wasn't always feasible for a variety of reasons.  While I struggle with where I am going next, I am grateful for the check I can write tonight and the bricks that check will purchase.

first official day back at work...

today was my first official day back at work.  lawyering on behalf of big companies and selfish family members did not really suit me before my trip and now, post-major-life-experience, I feel even more out of place.

I received an email from a partner that said:

Welcome back.  I hope you had a wonderful, life-affirming trip.  Now that you are back...(fill in mundane work assignment).

I laughed when I read that.  Life-affirming? My trip has led me to question my life, not affirm it.  It affirmed my faith - in God, in people, in the strength of the human spirit, in the game of soccer as a unifier of worlds....but I somehow I don't think that is what he meant.  This same partner commented to me before I left that he hoped I returned from Africa.  Perhaps even he could sense my struggles of the last year, where I wondered exactly what I was supposed to be doing, where I was supposed to be doing it, and if there was anyone there for me to be with (I guess "do it with" works, too but I am trying to keep it clean).

I spent a good portion of my day, looking at pictures members of my team had posted, looking for jobs where I can make a difference, looking at pictures again.  All this while fielding some family crises relating to my sister's upcoming wedding.  A family member decided not to come, sending ripples of discontent throughout my extended family.  It is a struggle to listen to what feels like petty disagreements in light of all that I just saw.  I felt myself ready to snap at my sister and tell her the exact design of the ice sculpture does not matter to me when children in Swaziland, children I had just held in my arms, did not have shoes. 

That is one of the difficulties with this experience - I do not want this experience to transform me into someone who can't get past what she saw.  I am no better than someone who has not gone to Swaziland and seen what I've seen.  I can't use this experience to think better of myself, to announce to the world that their problems, their issues, do not matter simply because there are starving children in Africa. (Oh, but how I wanted to about fifty times today).

Yes, what I saw is important and I will never forget - I will do everything in my power to tell others about what I saw.  My sister knows what I saw, she saw the pictures, and she knows there are people suffering there. But she is thirty-four years old and has dreamed of this day for as long as she can remember and if she wants to throw a hissy fit about an ice sculpture, then perhaps, she is entitled. 

Instead, I have to figure out someway to live with what I saw and remember all the lessons that were fresh in my heart just a week ago.  Lessons about what is truly important in life, lessons about giving back to the community, lessons about the glorious love of God.

back from africa

As the title of this blog suggests, I am recently back from Africa.  I saw so many things while serving in Swaziland - I cried, I laughed, I held orphaned children in my arms, I prayed with a woman who lost her home, I handed out blankets to people living at the garbage dump.  The images of my trip are burned forever in my mind.  Now that I am back, I am struggling with the world that surrounds me.  I need an outlet to share what I experienced and process what I feel is next for me.  I write for these purely selfish reasons, but I still have a story some might consider worthy of reading.