Yesterday -- while my email account was busy being hacked by Nigerian princes intent on terrifying my family members, supervisors, professors, and ministry of health contacts, ensuring that my mother never lets me leave the country again once I get myself back to the US – I was getting my butt back to Steenbok. (Mimic that syntax, random Nigerian hacker. I dare you.)
I left Mbabane at 6:30 in the morning, and made it to Steenbok at 11am. It was absolutely bizarre to be back on a taxi, driving through Tonga, Kamhlushwa, Naas, past Dludluma, seeing the signs to Malelane and Komatipoort. It was more disorienting by far than anything I’ve done yet since I got back. The time I spent in Steenbok seems so encapsulated in a way. These two years had such a discrete before and after. I am still friends with lots and lots of PCVs, I call Latoya occasionally, but that experience was so distinct. Its like a snowglobe, where I can look inside and shake things up but certainly never climb back inside. Or maybe its more like those little pill capsules, the ones where you can see the powder inside, and the little clear bit on the outside will dissolve in water eventually. Or stick to your hands if you handle them too much, which is why you’re not supposed to handle them too much. That’s what it felt like on the taxi in to Steenbok. Was this something I could go back to? Those two years – they are the most separate two years of my life. There is no bleed through. The person that I was, and the things that I did (in a good way) were so utterly of a piece with the place where they happened. I could not have been that person and done those things in any other place than Steenbok, and it has shaped nearly all the choices that I made since. I felt like I was rolling those little pills around in my hand, trying to play with what was inside, slowly eroding the barrier that kept then separate from now.
I shouldn’t have worried. Its true, of course. My time being a PCV and living in the village was totally contained and delineated in a way that few other experiences could ever be. And the phrase “you can’t go home again” kept rolling around in my head. Here’s the thing I learned though, and the thing I keep learning – people are people and they keep on doing their thing. Just because all I know about Steenbok are two particular years, that’s no reason to think that it really did just stay so separate.
I walked into my key school, and waved at the first teacher I saw. Teachers came pouring out of the office and we were hugging and laughing and grabbing each other like we just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I am much slimmer now. Many people mentioned it. One of the best moments was walking into Bonga’s classroom. I stuck my head in, and all I hear is “NOMVUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” and there’s 6th grader streaking towards me for one of the best hugs of my life. We went together to find my host mother, and Izora. Izora is…a person now! Not the loud fat dirty baby I fell in love with, but an absolutely adorable first grader with the cutest smile and absolutely no teeth from eating too many sweets. I asked her, “Do you remember me?” She did. It felt so good to hug her again.
I walked to another school, and there we repeated the process. The hugs, the exclamations, (the commenting that I’ve lost some weight and “now you look like a young lady!” WTF? What did I look like before?) I could only stay for a couple of hours, since it was going to be another 5 hour process back to Mbabane, but I swore up and down to come back. I got to see Latoya, only for a few minutes, she had to go and write an exam. She showed me pictures from her matric dance (prom) that they had held the week before. She looked beautiful, of coruse.
I know that right now I’m romanticizing my experience a little bit. It was a weird, fast, awkward, visit. I forgot that I did in fact live way the hell out in the boonies, and that I also lived in one of the warmer and dustier places that people can comfortably live without air conditioning. Assuming you vastly expand the definition of the word ‘comfort.’ I’m going back in a few weeks – with a rental car. I want to stay a little longer, so that I have the chance to sit down and drink tea and actually visit with people, not just drop in with a bang and a “hi! Bye!! I’ll be back!” All in all though, not such a bad start.
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