Lately, I’ve been thinking often of a scared 22-year old
girl. In an unprecedented moment of courage, that girl hugged her mother,
father, and little brother goodbye in the lobby of the Indianapolis
International Airport, knowing that it could well be the last hug she would
give them for 27 months. She didn’t cry as she turned from them and walked to
the security line in the darkest hour of the night before the sun rose. She
didn’t cry as she waited in line, knowing they were already gone and wondering
(and already knowing the answer) if they were as heartbroken and frightened and
happy and scared as she was. She didn’t cry until a TSA agent conversationally
asked her where she was going; that casual question turned the unique unreality
granted by a sleepless night into sudden and crushing reality. She was going
away on a one-way ticket and she wasn’t coming back for years.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I wrote that paragraph.
Although I’ve grown from that girl as these three years have passed, I still
feel a powerful empathy for her overwhelmed heart and a bit of admiration for
the courage it took her (and, truly, it took all PCVs and their families) to
say such an uncertain and frightening goodbye. In retrospect, I feel the
courage of that moment more than I ever could have at the time, because now I
know exactly what was going to happen next. Moving abroad can challenge your
deeply held beliefs of right and wrong by painting them as cultural constructs;
it can make you both more alive and create the feeling of your life being
paused at the same time; it opens your heart to people you couldn’t have
dreamed of in a culture you couldn’t have imagined, only to break your heart by
leaving them to see the people you’ve spent years desperately missing. Living
abroad is lonely and powerful and an incredible journey of discovery, and it
can change the way you see and move through the world even upon returning home.
Truthfully, it’s been a time of tears, both sad and joyful,
for me as of late. I can’t believe I’m writing this post – I can’t believe I’m
leaving what is officially-on-paper my post, and officially-in-heart my home.
For a final time, if you’ll humor me, I’d like to take you on a brief journey
of the love I developed for Swaziland, for Swazis, and for myself.
My first few months in Swaziland were absolutely miserable.
I remember lying in my freezing bed in the room of my training homestead, while
the drops of condensation from my first (and very messy) hot steamy bucket bath
dripped from the low tin roof onto my upturned face. The thought that kept
flitting through my mind was, “This is my life now. This is what it’ll be like
for 2 years. This is what I willingly and knowingly committed to.” I struggled
to be healthy and struggled with culture shock. I struggled with not having a
support system due to not having access to a phone to reach my family and
friends back home. I drifted through the days of training in a lonely haze,
alternately feeling sorry for myself and occasionally making a friend.
When I got to my permanent site after the conclusion of
training, I was happy. I was lonely and overwhelmed again to be the only
American in a village where I hadn’t yet built any relationships, but I had a
wonderful friend named Nombuso and a host mother that I bonded with instantly.
Over the months of integration and my first year of service, I lived. Nombuso
became one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and together we were unstoppable
(actually, she was unstoppable and let me come along for the ride). We
established a library in a primary school with the help of initially-reluctant
and ultimately-in-charge Patricia Nxumalo, ran a session on food preservation
training with the rural health motivators in the village and a representative
from the Ministry of Agriculture, started a small business by selling the
products we made, taught financial literacy to children heading households, and
had plans to start an economic savings group with the small business as more
and more women got involved. Nombuso used her money from her business to attend
and graduate from the University of Swaziland, and then went on to build
herself, her husband, and her 5-year old son a brand new homestead. Seeing her
success and coming to love her more every day was an experience unlike any
other – to be both mentor and mentee in a friendship with a woman that fit me
like a puzzle piece was so deeply fulfilling. I believe I can say with
certainty that miles alone can’t end a friendship forged in love, and she’ll be
a part of my life and heart forever.
By the end of that first year, however, my relationships
with my host father and a man in the community were becoming worrisome.
Individually, they both caused me problems that eventually made me fear for my
well-being and possibly my life. I won’t delve into the details of this again –
I covered the parts of it that I’m comfortable sharing in another blog post and
I can’t see a reason to relive these instances of trauma, both explicitly
stated and internally remembered.
When I was unceremoniously pulled from a village that had
been my home and placed far from the host mother and best friend that I loved,
the library that I was proud of and hoping to improve with Patricia, the
projects planned and not done, and the men who had caused me sleepless nights and
waking terror, I predictably experienced a range of emotions. All those
relationships that I had worked so hard to build, reaching deep within myself
past a frightened and shy introvert to find someone with an open heart waiting
to emerge, were gone. They were hours and an expensive trip away. I couldn’t go
back to the village for my own safety, but I could meet them in the nearby town
if they had transport money and freedom of travel. I knew that for the first
time in my service my physical being was safe – I truly felt that in my heart
and it brought me stillness and peace. However, everything that I had built and
would build “one day” had ceased to be when I realized that “one day” wouldn’t
ever come for me. I started at my new village feeling jaded and hurt, but safe.
This transition was, without question, the hardest part of
my Peace Corps service. I struggled to get out of bed and spent the vast
majority of my time shut up in my hut with the door closed. I was terrified to
throw my whole self out there again – after all, I was leaving in less than a
year and I’d experience being ripped away all over again. I was reserved with
my host family (who really is the most warm and accepting and patient group of
people ever – I am proud to call myself a Mamba), hesitant to commit at the
school, and didn’t take the initiative to sit at the shops to meet and talk
with people, as I had done only a year previously. I lost a lot of time to this
period, and that’s the only true regret of my service.
One day, I was walking down the main road from one of my
earlier days working at the high school. I was talking to a friend in Peace
Corps. I had leaned on my friends a lot for support, and I was starting to
exhaust their supply of emotional availability as well as to make them deeply
concerned for my health. One of them finally told me: “You’re so unhappy here.
You either need to find a way to be happy or you need to go home now. You can’t
exist like this forever.”
That was what I needed to hear. I was fortunate enough to have
the mental health following this period of healing to pick myself up and throw
myself into work. I had spent a lot of time doing very little, but I was still
able to expand an existing library through facilitating a donation of 1000
books, coordinate a girls’ empowerment club (GLOW), help coach a debate team,
and assist in the purchasing of food and cooking for a large girls’ empowerment
camp. It wasn’t all that I could have achieved in ideal circumstances, but it
was the best I could have done with what remaining time I had left myself. I
still built strong relationships and I still had projects that I was proud of
in the 7 months I had, and I am still proud of what my counterparts and I built
together.
During that second year, I wrestled with the decision of
whether I should stay a third year or go home as expected. I had applied to 6
graduate schools and been accepted to only 2, neither of which gave me enough
scholarship money to make attendance possible. I didn’t have a job lined up, I
had no plan, and I got rejected from many of my top schools. Staying seemed to
make sense, but my heart wasn’t in it. Still, I met with representatives from
the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation one sunny Wednesday in May.
After my conversation with them about what they were looking for and what their
Foundation was like, I was sold. I called my Country Director and accepted the
job on the spot – I went from feeling a bit obligated to stay to feeling
excited about my new job.
This past year at EGPAF has been wonderful. I got to work as
an epidemiologist on various research studies, which we used to strengthen
existing programs and design new ones as unaddressed needs arose. These health
interventions happened both at the grassroots level and at the highest levels
of the Ministry of Health. It’s an odd transition to be working with national
committees on a country’s health policies one day and going to a rural clinic
to make sure the patient registers are filled out completely the next, but it’s
been the best possible experience. I have not in my service experienced the
professional growth that I experienced in this last year, and it has changed my
life. It has also impacted change at a level I couldn’t previously have
imagined. My name and my work is part of some national health policies – I have
concrete evidence of my impact on this health system, which is something very
few people get to experience. Truly, I am so incredibly fortunate.
Most importantly, my year in the capital city working with
EGPAF has been a year of relationships, love, and happiness. I can honestly say
that leaving these people breaks my heart – I can’t imagine where I’d be
without each and every one of the people I’m fortunate enough to work with.
Between the quirky Strategic Information Unit; the compassionate Clinical
Services Unit; the hardworking Pilots; and all the helpful (and endlessly
patient) souls in Procurement, Finance, Capacity Building, Communications, and
the other units, I’ve made true friends. These are people who have enriched my
life simply by their presence, and I hope that I’ve meant to them what they’ve
meant to me.
This work is my
passion, and working in my field only made me more excited to get my MPH and
continue this work in underserved and vulnerable populations in urban areas in
the USA. My experiences here served me incredibly professionally – this year, I
applied to 5 graduate schools and got accepted (with scholarships) to all 5.
I’m attending my dream school to continue the work I started here, and I
couldn’t be more excited. If I have served EPGAF even half as well as they have
served me, I’ll count myself a good Volunteer!
Finding a quotation with the right level of beauty,
poignancy, and profundity to both reflect on and summarize my service,
Swaziland, and Peace Corps isn’t easy, but I believe I have found the right
one. To conclude this blog post, I leave you all with the words of A. A. Milne:
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye
so hard.”
Truly, truly lucky. Siyabonga, eSwatini. Ngiyakutsandza.
