So here I am, writing again. To anyone who might still be reading.
It’s a Peace Corps cliché that the hardest part of service is returning
home. Like the loyal disciple of Peace
Corps ideology that I am, I believed the cliché and braced myself for
impact. Literally. As the plane touched down in Los Angeles, I
tensed all my muscles, gritted my teeth and steeled myself for the impending emotional
discomfort that supposedly accompanies “reintegration.”
But arriving home wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, it felt great. Seeing my parents again for the first time in
months, getting real fast food, sleeping in a bed with a real mattress – none
of it was even remotely uncomfortable. Anything but.
I expected to be overwhelmed by the affluence and excess of America,
but instead I found myself reveling in it.
I went to restaurants and took an extra ten or fifteen minutes to just
read all the options on the menu, loving that I could ask for anything there
and expect it to arrive at my table within the hour. I took extra time in the shower, enjoying the
unending supply of hot the water. I
cooked Christmas dinner with my family, taking pleasure in all the flavors and
textures of the food, the incredible variety of cooking utensils at my disposal,
the ease of using a stove I could light on command.
At some point I realized I was deliberately avoiding thoughts of
Rwanda. Maybe I was distracted by all of
the fresh stimulus. Or maybe I was trying
to avoid beginning every sentence with, “Well, in Rwanda…” Whatever the reason, I’d push Rwanda from my
mind whenever something reminded me. And
reminders were, and are, everywhere. Any
time I forget to use a cutting board or wash something by hand in the
sink. Or the sound of rain. Or the smell of smoke. Little things.
A Peace Corps friend of mine recently posted a link to some footage of
Rwanda. It was designed to promote tourism in Rwanda so it’s mostly shots of
the national parks and Lake Kivu, neither of which are even remotely near my
site or all that connected to my Peace Corps experience, but it still got to
me. Watching it, I realized I recognized every single place he shot, recognized
the way people smiled for his camera, the way children thronged around
him. I realized, watching it, that
Rwanda will always be a second home to me.
That I can never de-familiarize myself with Rwanda, nor remove Rwanda
from my history. And for the first time
since returning home I realized how lonely I am in that sensation and how
deeply, how unbearably, I miss my second home.
In spite of all the comforts of America, I miss Rwanda.
I’m still happy to be here. I’m
staying with my family while I prepare for the GRE and look for a job and being
with them is wonderful, not to mention how much I still love taking hot showers
and cooking in a kitchen with a stove and a sink and all the implements. I love my smart phone, I love grocery
shopping, I love driving. I still love
reading menus, even after a month. But
all of this is still very strange and it’s still difficult not to compare
everything to Rwanda, and the fact that most people I encounter have no idea
is, in a word, isolating. Some days are
good, and some days I feel very, very alone.
So returning home isn’t as easy as it initially seemed. Like any transition, it takes time to get
acclimated and the process of acclimation isn’t always comfortable. But it’s doable, and it gets easier every
day.
