American Pie

Last week marked three months left of my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and so I’m beginning to shift my focus on to other things. I’ve still got a few projects left at school – my map of course, which is coming along nicely, slowly building our libraries,* one last Likusasa Letfu girl’s camp, and a young author’s faire that I basically knelt down and begged the principal for. It won’t be sustainable, but it will be really fun and cute. Other than those one time things though, I’m mostly just wrapping it all up, writing things down for the next volunteer (well, planning to do that eventually, anyways), and researching the trip I plan to take after COS.

I realized the other day that its been a really long time since I felt homesick. Not a really long time since I desperately wanted to be home, or since I felt out of place, or since I missed my friends and family, but…a long time since there weren’t other things to balance it out. I am overwhelmed by what a great privilege it is, and has been, to live here and to become a part of the scenery, not just a tourist. I love my morning walk to school each day. I love watching the women sweep their yards, hearing the kids call to one another, seeing sunrise over the Lubombo mountains each morning. I love taking the bus through the farms and mountains to town, and listening to everybody on it singing hymns all the way.

The music here is a gift. It is so simple – incredibly simple! Its just voices in four part harmony, learned by ear and sung by people who don’t rehearse or study or bother with the theory. They just sing, and pick it up, and join in. And its some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. I’ve been to and been in some of the most technically difficult and musically beautiful concerts, and nothing here is diminished in comparison. A woman once asked me, “In America, what do you do when you are feeling something strongly? When you are happy or sad?” I told her I didn’t know. Maybe we smiled, or told a friend, or something like that. “Well here,” she told me, “we sing. That is how we feel our emotions and tell them. We sing.” Its that easy. I can’t explain it properly. I think its something you just have to hear and be inside of to understand. But it literally stops me in my tracks every time. I go out to the tap for a bucket of water, and hear the choir practicing on Saturday evenings, and it’s impossible to just get my water and walk away. I am forced to listen, held in place for the space of a song. A Friday morning on the bus, watching green hills covered in bush and po-po, listening to the voices around me -- it’s one of life’s perfect moments that I doubt can ever be replicated or moved. And I never cease to feel grateful for the privilege to be there, in that perfect moment. I could sing.

*“growing” them, if you will, but I hate that term. I remember having this argument with dad in the seventh grade. I still stand by my claim that it’s a silly buzzword, whose only purpose is to make you sound more important. Growing is an individual process that a thing does on its own. Plants grow. Building is an active thing that you or some other individual participates in. You build something. Its active and participatory. There is work involved, not standing around watching it happen.