Rope

I’m uncertain how I feel at this very moment. Unclear. I feel like throwing up. Anxious. My heart beating at an unusual pace. I feel nostalgic yet a little underwhelmed by it all. I’m worried I should be feeling something more, more depth, more grief. But I feel something. My nerves are edgy and I feel like I’m cutting a rope, a safety line into the past. The place that was home for two years, I leave it behind, all of it.

Crane made a point this morning, in a fit of random, inexplicable laughter. She said it’s strange that we perceive returned volunteers as magical beings that reside in a magical faraway land; a place that’s dream-like, a mirage, a fantastical place, unattainable, unreachable, out of the realm of comprehension. A place we could never be, because this is our home, our reality. She continued that soon I would one of those magical people, far, far away.

And we assume this other place is happy and all is wonderful. Like a familiar idea of the West.

I felt, thought, expected it to be a bigger event. Not necessarily festive or celebratory, but just bigger, more important. A bigger deal than it actually was, which felt more like throwing a rock in sand than in water. Nothing happen. My landlord, Mr. Singini, inspected the house , I handed over the keys, my neighbors kids raided the boxes of junk I left in the kitchen, and I picked some moringa leaves for dinner. That was it.

It was like any other day. But it was the last day. My last day, most likely, forever in that house. So many memories, good, bad. Bear recommended I spend some time alone in the empty house, which evoked a need to pray, strangely. It had a holy or vast greatness to it, the empty house, as if it was a shrine to memory, each brick an idol encompassing two years of life. I chanted three “oms,” as Bear recommended leaving good vibes for the next resident, and just walked around.

It was like walking around a temple. You feel something, but it’s intangible, it has no shape, form, or definition, and as a result you draw your mind and soul to feel what you believe should be felt in such a place. You draw something that is tangible, fathomable, like memory or love. But what you really feel you can never say, only knowing that something is there.

A lot of memories in that house. I remember the times I was scared, the times I was alone, the times I was sick, and the times I was truly happy. I remember laughing uncontrollably with Bear and Zebra. I remember all the times I spent exhausted, passed out on the mat or on the couch and just staring at the ceiling. Or watching the iron sheets as rain pounded the roof and water dripped down the troughs. I remember aimlessly watching the geckos, their unusual clicks and alien movements on the walls. Home.

Home for so long, you don’t know much else. There is a lump at the bottom of my throat and my chest feels heavy.

The Heart of Darkness

For two years I have lived in Malawi. It’s been a bewildering and often frightening experience in a sparse and desolate landscape. Not so much frightening because of the experience, but of confronting oneself and ones inner most demons.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked in a mirror in my life. Superficially inspecting my clothes or examining areas of thinning hair. But never have I seen myself, as if a mirror was a mere distraction from inspecting my insides, occupying my mind and sight with layers of flesh and follicles of hair. In Malawi, far from the cities, the demons fly, they have form and shape, and there isn’t a mirror in sight. Your fears are sharpened, your wits tested, and you walk amongst the scum of the worst of your selves.

Never do you feel so alone. A strange land that never makes sense because it can not. It’s impossible and that is what makes it such a haunting, terrifying, and perturbing place that drives so many travelers and strangers to insanity and to their wits’ end. It exists, nothing more and nothing less must be asked of it. No questions, no order, and no sense must be extracted and suddenly one finds a peculiar sort of peace. Giving oneself to a greater power, to nature, and letting existence carry on. We have such little control of our lives, a fact often forgotten in the comforts of home that it explodes with a vengeance.

And how do you face yourself? The worst of yourself? The best you have seen, but what of that inner darkness, kept buried deep under layers of years and ignorance. When people will ask me about Malawi or my two years in the warm heart of Africa, I will expect to detail my projects and the sights I’ve seen, the foods I’ve tasted, and tell anecdotal tales from my village. What I will discard is the two years spent with the darkness in myself: the frightened man, the weak, the paranoid, the angry, the violent, the merciless.

Anxiety, paranoia, all stemming from fear of the unknown. I hear shouts and shrieks in the night from youngsters roaming the fields, mysterious drums beating in the distance into the morning, and drunken men aimlessly babbling on the streets. The wind blows fiercely and branches scrape the tin roof like nails on a chalkboard. Fear manifests in its worst form in solitude. Though it was not as fierce when I arrived, it manifested. To be alone in an alien place in the pitch darkness of night, you see nothing and hear sounds in the blanket of quiet, and your inner wirings only know survival.

“It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air, high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell.”

Though it’s been almost a century since Conrad’s story, and countless foreigners have passed and lived through the heart of Africa, there is still a mystery to everything here. Perhaps not the in cities or tourist destinations, but out in the villages, far from a road or light bulb, it is still a foreign place. I have met numerous white people who come here on missions or as volunteers and proudly utter the few phrases of vernacular they know and boast their oneness with Malawians. They claim to have found their home, their love. Though in their mind it may ring true, in actuality they don’t belong at all. I can’t describe what drives them, though often it is one’s unhappiness at their own home, a feeling of inability to fit into their own culture and society. So they come here.

The truth is no white person, no matter how long they have lived here, or claim to have friends like family or that this is their home, have no idea of the realities. They often live in cities or tourist areas, and never longer than a service contract in a rural area. And after centuries of exploiting, proselytizing, and living here, they still claim it as a region that must be fixed and put in order, a problem that must be solved. They still lack understanding of how life works and continue to plaster a Western ideal of society and religion on a nation that never has and never will fit a mold.

The Indians and Chinese, however, seem to have accepted the fact that Malawi will remain a mystery to them. And they deeply fear what they don’t understand. For them it is a business relationship, they seek wealth and no more. Not religion nor friendship. They keep a vigilant watch over their workers and their enterprises, and secure their houses and shops with iron bars and bribed policemen. They are quite aware they don’t belong here and aware they are not liked or often welcome in this country, and because of that they are two groups that endure and sustain an existence in Malawi.

For all the claims of friendships you see only high-wall fences, barbed-wire compounds, guard dogs, and hired security companies protecting white people, wealthy Asians, and luxurious imports parked in grand homes. There is no friendship. The rasta-whites laying about the lakeshore be damned with their faux-rasta brethren selling curios to adventure-seekers. This is a place that cannot and will never be deciphered to foreigners and white people. If I am wrong, then let all of Malawi be prosperous.

Once we abandon plans to exploit, convert, or understand Malawi, then only can we grow closer. As I have said before, all foreigners must leave, everyone. Then only can Malawi become a nation, the strong, cohesive, beautiful nation that is waiting under piles of aid and ruin. The foreigners, and more so the white people, have perpetuated a continent of darkness, no longer in a awful colonial way, but in a legal, modern, exploitation under the guise of a guilty apology supplemented with financial assistance. The mines continue to expand. The oil continues to flow through pipelines. The lands continue to be taken.

And the nation grows darker.

In Limbo Grand

In a strange place right now. I knew this place was coming, I saw the signs along the years. I look at my friends back home, a perfect four years for them. They are all by now VPs, Senior Analysts, Associates, Corporate Developers, Acquisitions Specialists, CFA designated, brilliant, successful and on a trajectory to something highly valued in society. They are financially sound, able, and academically qualified to move their lives forward, to graduate studies, starting a family, finding balance and happiness in their lives.

My life amounts to a handful of six month jobs and two years in rural Africa. It’s like I’ve moved no where and have no where to go. The plans and ideas I had in my head at graduation didn’t pan out, the plans changed, and often too quickly life took sharp turns, but I adapted. I don’t regret the decisions and events that led to this very moment and I certainly don’t regret my two years here. I’ve never been happier and purposeful than I have been here. However, I’m underwhelmed by what’s at the end of the road.

It’s somewhat daunting to think of the past four years, my mind has nothing to anchor, everything was so brief and fleeting. A set of dominos laid in a thousand different tracks, and the sequence that fell dropped me here. And the dominoes continue to fall back to America, and then where? To what? I have not a clue but my heart has palpitations merely considering the thought. In a flight to safety, I cling to a world I knew, though not so well as my peers, but it’s all I remember of home.

Will I fit in any more amongst my friends back home? Or will they be so different and so far in their careers and lives, on such a different economic level, that we have nothing in common any longer? Am I smart enough? Capable enough? Have I lost my edge, a sensibility that was sharpened through dedication and persistence on a specific set of tasks? Do I want to start all over? Do I want to do this? If not, what else can I do? This is all I know and this is, if my memory hasn’t failed, is what I was good at, what I enjoyed. Most might not believe it, but I loved what I did.

The friends I knew, I loved. I don’t know if they will be the same people. Two years is a long time and I will have missed that much of their lives. We may no longer have anything in common, no tales to recount, no adventures shared in recent memory. Just a giant hole. A dark empty space of silence. Or worse: perhaps I’m not the same person anymore. Then what? A frightening thought because that’s not something easily changed or controlled. That’s forced exile.

I don’t want to be that guy. The guy in a circle of friends that sometimes carries the burden of failure. Not failure in the sense that they have actually failed at life, but relative failure, failure in comparison to the immense success of others and what society considers as a benchmark of success. They have climbed that ladder in leaps and bounds in a highly competitive field in one of the worst economies in history. It’s a race and I feel like I left the track in the heat of competition. And now when I return, it will be a whole new race and perhaps I’ve forgotten my abilities. Or lost the hunger.

Not a lot in the world more competitive than the finance lot. They have the hunger. I had hunger and I certainly hope I’m famished when I return home.

Part of me is a little frustrated. I worked too hard and scarified too much to get where I had. I had such a different set of expectations for what these two years would be like, what life after would be. As with life, it never goes as you planned. Yet it sometimes takes unexpected but wonderful turns. My two year turn was unexpectedly wonderful, but now what? Is there a turn waiting back home? Will it expedite? Can I catch up? I’m certainly going to try.

The Boxer

April 16^th. The official last day of my Peace Corps service. It’s strange to look upon your home, your community with eyes of finality, with nostalgia, to see things as if it were all about to end. Two years has come and gone in a moment and my mind is making perpetrations, automatically, as if it’s coded in me on some primordial, instinctive level. Mental lists are drafted, what to keep, what to leave, completing paperwork. It’s a little frightening, the need to control change, to not let it surprise you around a corner, and the lack of control we have on virtually everything in life. Yet my mind labors on, occupying itself in fear of some other thought.

With the sound of tearing cloth I suddenly realized that all my boxers were worn and torn. Two years of use and scrubbing with a harsh brush had worn them to thin cotton that tore with stretch of a leg. All of my boxers are deteriorating and each day I throw out another pair. Two years has passed quickly and though it seems to have passed unnoticed it’s strange to see the signs. I am exhausted and have lost the energy, but I can’t seem to pinpoint when it happen. Perhaps it was the daily wear that one day was stretched too thin and tore. Ripped to a halt.

All the furniture, kitchenware and other items are all sold. Hopefully, my laptop will be sold soon. I will leave the country with less than the little I arrived with. Light. Two bags filled with whatever clothes are no longer torn and small keep sakes. And the preparations continue.

A New Year’s Rain

I’m sitting on the lower bunk in a cramped room at the Pine Tree. It’s a little chilly in Mzuzu, but utterly quiet here a few kilometers outside the city. The other three bunks are empty and it’s raining outside the window. It’s New Year’s Eve. My family called to say they would call back in a half hour, they were checking out of their hotel in Miami. Zebra is at the lakeshore with his boss and her husband. Bear is in Lilongwe, not particularly in the mood to talk to me. The past two months have been a breathtaking whirlwind of travel, a test of friendships, and an ever creeping sadness. I am exhausted. Movement, sounds, sights, smells and people. I feel like my body is preparing for the return home, changing back to its original state. I don’t know why, I don’t particularly want to.

Happy Birthday Sis

Second one I missed, and hopefully the last. Happy Birthday, wish you a lovely twenty-first that you will remember. The world outside the bubble awaits, and though it seems scary and exciting at first, it falters hastily and slips into normalcy before you realize. Enjoy it now. And add to my tab a second Sunday cart feast at China Pearl.

Why The World Ends

The world seems to be crumbling apart. A new uprising, war, famine, dictator with each passing day. Things worsening with no end in sight. People clinging to the hope that the day is darkest before the dawn. As much as I teach myself not to care, tell myself that these are the world’s problems – they brought it upon themselves, they can fix themselves, I can’t help it. Whether I like it or not, I care. There’s not a thing I can do to change that.

Yes, providing food aid to Somalia is a bad idea. It sounds inhuman to say, but it’s the truth. Aid perpetuates a deceitfully destructive machine fueled by guilt and politics. The only way we truly learn from our mistakes is to face the consequences and to try something else next time. If we are simply handed free chances then mistakes become commodities. We no longer exercise caution and thought, discard logic, and are wasteful in our ways.

Despite all this. Despite my firm belief that aid is an incredibly unproductive solution to the problem, I still want to help. I want to do something. It’s not guilt. It’s certainly not obligation. It’s something much further inside, places quite unfamiliar to me. Humanity. Empathy. How can I let another suffer? The world could do nothing and Somalia would painfully and slowly find a sustainable solution to famine. But we can’t. I can’t.

I guess that is what separates us from most animals. To empathize, to feel and channel the emotions or sufferings of others is very queer nature. The world may seem to be in the Kali yoga, which it quite likely is, but people will not change. There are awful, ruthless characters acting as leaders in this age, but the power belongs to the people. In the years to come perhaps every leader will learn to fear the people, who for so long have been trodden upon.

At the same time people got complacent. They were happy with the lives they had and were happy to let anyone lead, as long as the status quo was maintained.