After another hectic month on the road, I arrived in Maun this past weekend. I hesitate to say that I got home, because, well, I am perpetually confused about where home is, and besides, that last time I called Maun home, my Zimbabwean sister yelled at me because my home is supposed to be where hers is.
Anyway, I stood in my room, staring into my closet, looking at the clothes hanging there, and I thought, I’m not ready to go. As crazy as I feel here a lot of the time, I love it. I love that I am never bored and that there is something to learn every day. I love being stretched and challenged and reminded that my view of the world is not the only one. I love the simplicity, the way in which a less complicated day to day existence helps clarify why I do the things I do. And I love the fact that looking in the mirror here becomes an act of honesty rather than an examination of which mask I’m wearing today.
But at the same time, I am definitely ready to go back. I have a fantastic job waiting for me, a brand new loft almost ready to be lived in, family and friends that I miss. And some of the things upon which I have to spend energy here are, well, a present stream of frustration that ebbs and flows depending on how much I need from university bureaucracy. Right now the flow is pretty high, and so my patience has been worn low. So I do look forward to some of the simplicities of modern life as well.
But I know that when I arrive, I’m going feel displaced. Chosen or not, wanted or not, I will be unsure of where my feet are planted. In Afrikaans, the word for this is soutpiel. It literally means, well, salty penis. But metaphorically, it refers to a man with one foot in the West (especially Europe) and the other in Africa – so something is left dangling in the ocean. It’s an insult, an indictment of a lack of commitment to one or the other. Apart from lacking the requisite anatomy to fit the description precisely, I think I understand how this feels. I haven’t been able to make the commitment to stay here, or in the US. I know that going back will be eased by the idea that I will be in and out of Africa for a long time, which seems like the best of both worlds. But I often think I should have decided to stay here, difficult or not, the other side of the world or not. I feel a bit like, as Peter Godwin says, I am leaving my post.
The problem is, as I’ve said before, I want to be a full participant. If I am really to be here, I want both feet on the ground. I want to be a member of the community in which I live, and not just the white expat community (eesh). But this is hard, if not impossible. There will always be barriers, things I don’t understand, cultural discourses which I may come to understand but never just sink into. And as a white foreigner, there is a lingering feeling that at any time, someone could pull the carpet out from under me.
I imagine I might say some of these same things about the US, but for slightly different reasons. There, I think I do get it – I just don’t agree with most of it. I feel marginal in a different way. Maybe the difference is making the choice for myself about where and in what ways I feel I can do the most good…and be healthy and happy while doing it. But as always, I reserve the right to change my mind. And there are few things more American than that.
