Culture Shock

My Late Night Ramblings

The nearest I can get to Ethiopia is through a computer. It is my only link to the space that seems to have stolen my heart and soul. I search for news from my friends and contacts in Ethiopia about the children many times throughout the day. Whether it is daytime or nighttime in Ethiopia it doesn’t matter. I need something. Any sign to know that the children are okay. To be with them. Somehow. Through an email if that is the best I can do. Unfortunately, it is the best and only option right now and to be honest I don’t know how much longer I can take it. Mest sent me an email two days ago which she tries to do as often as she can while also teaching hundreds of students a day, 75 children per classroom. It’s her first year teaching. It is what will provide her living expenses once April 2008 hits and she is forced to leave Kechene, the only place she knows as home. She’s dear to my heart and I absolutely adore her, she’s nineteen. She sends me updates on the children, which again I adore but at the same time only bring tears to my eyes. “The children look for you everyday. They ask me when you will come visit. Why are you not visiting? I keep thinking I will see you one day after work. Will you please come this weekend?” Another email she writes, “every time a taxi comes into the home and they see a foreigner in it they run to it thinking it is you finally.” What does one say to that? Many of the children did not know that I was leaving or should I say that they did not understand that I would be leaving for a long time. I had left for international trips before, but never longer than 3 weeks and I always returned with suitcases of fun stuff for the kids to play with. For how long will they wait this time? I tried to tell them that I would return by the end of the school year, something I hoped would be concrete and easier to understand than months and days. They still wait.

All the thoughts I have in my head and the talking through my thoughts at night while in bed while trying to fall asleep escape me now as I sit at the computer at 1:21 am writing because I do no know what else to do except for to write. This, running and eating seem to be the only therapy that takes my thoughts away from the aching. I’m in North Carolina right now, visiting half of my family. When I first arrived it was dreary and cold. There was no way to get me out of bed. My entire body ached from what has been ripped out of my heart – almost everything, my children. I have never been one to sleep well and I have had my bouts with insomnia, especially in Ethiopia, however, now I can sleep at anytime. I can sleep 12 hours, a first for me no matter how tired and still take a nap in the middle of the day and fall asleep on cue at night. My first images when I awake are of the children, my days are filled with them as well – imagining them beside me. And the last images I see are of them as well. Always the same few images. They are real and I keep hoping that if I see them often enough they will not only appear real but I’ll be able to feel them as well. I see them walking through the front door, I see them on my lap playing, I see them in the store walking next to me, I see them collapsing on my legs…they are everywhere. The only images I have are of Kechene.

I admit, the culture shock has been great. Much greater than I had imagined actually, which was compounded by me not only returning home but also visiting family in North Carolina where life in the mountains is nothing like that of Minnesota. I’ve been here before, but it’s all just been too much to take for some reason or another. It’s not the physical surroundings that have created much of the shock, mostly conversations I have with people who have learned that I was in Ethiopia for 10 months. Honestly, it has made me not want to step out of the house or pick up the phone for the fear of hearing yet another ignorant person. Outside world, that just doesn’t exist. The most horrendous comment I received was from a man, I believe in Duluth but I honestly can’t say because I was so mad I just forgot everything else. I had just told him that I had lived in Ethiopia for 10 months and he said, “Wow. Ethiopia. That must have been the most horrible place to be.” (By the way this was not in a sympathetic tone, but a condescending tone as if to ask, “Why would anyone EVER want to go there.”) I was stupified. Defensively, I replied in a disgusted tone that no, it was not a horrible place to be. In fact I enjoy it much more there than I do in the U.S., the people are amazing, the country is absolutely beautiful, yes, there are many problems, but they are making some progress in the right direction. To say the least I have learned a few phrases that are just better left never repeated – especially those dealing with race.

There is a quote that I would like to include as a final statement though not necessarily relevant to this journal entry. It was the closing paragraph in the book I just finished this evening titled, Angels of a Lower Flight, an autobiography about one woman’s work to save orphaned children in Cite Soleil, Haiti:

Am I happy? Yes, although the world is so imperfect. I keep sight of the world where there are no more sorrows or tears, a world that we’re invited to by grace. I know I will be there someday. In the meantime, I choose to walk through the lowlands to slap away the talons of darkness that cling to my children, seemingly unloved and forgotten, but indeed the angels of a lower flight.