Hopes and Fears of Coming Home

I've been thinking a lot about what I will take away from Nigeria--figuratively and literally--and what I am prepared to leave behind. It's sobering, but I'm sharing it here so that you, my friends, family, and cheerleaders (HI MOM) can anticipate the changes in me when I step off the plane on June 18th.

I'm going to need closure. Lots of it. This place has endeared me to her people, her traditions, her fashion. Yes, there will be things I won't miss, but they will be grossly outweighed by the things I will carry with me forever.

Some of the things I hope to leave behind include my assumptions about Nigerians, my fear of international travel, my ignorance of the teaching profession, and my innate American-centrism.

I plan to bring back an appreciation for the generosity I have been shown here and a desire to pay it back forward, the self esteem that comes from cutting it in a third-world country, a closet full of Nigerian clothes, and at least 2 bags of pounded yam flour.

By the time I return, I hope to have found the words to describe how blessed I feel to have shared in this life for the past 8 months. I hope to demonstrate my ability to tie a hair tie (no, for real). I hope to testify to the warmth of a people who have been unfairly represented by a greedy administration and foolish religious radicals.

I hope I leave behind my need to schedule everything, my impatience with the speed of life (and the desire to move at break-neck speed in the first place), & my taking clean water for granted.

I hope I will always be willing to drop everything for a friend in need and to express sympathy as genuinely and persistently as the Nigerians do.

I hope I come home a stronger woman with direction and purpose, with compassion and generosity, without rose-colored glasses about life outside the U.S., but with hope and optimism for life in general.

Ultimately, I hope I come back to Nigeria someday.

All these hopes come hand in hand with fears, naturally. I fear that I will forget what it feels like to be loved unconditionally by a classroom of 2nd-graders. I fear that my pictures and blog posts have been wholly ineffectual in communicating the beauty of this place and its people. I fear the strange glances when I use the exclamation, "Kai" in public. (Because, I promise you, that is permanently cemented in my vocabulary. No two ways about it.)

Full Disclosure: I fear that my family and friends will not understand the heart and passion and longing I feel towards Nigeria. I fear that I will be tempted to write off this year as a "gap year" between college and the rest of my life. This is my life. It will never not be part of my life. I'm honestly not trying to be melodramatic here, but there's no going back. I can't undo the impact this year has had on me (though I suspect time will lessen it).
I positively THREW myself into this life and this culture and the fact that when I raise my voice in my classroom, it comes out in a perfect native Nigerian accent is not because I'm an actress and faking it but because that is the genuine Miss Maggie Angry Voice. I perfected it here and so that's what it sounds like.
Frankly, I checked my Americanness at the door and have tried to learn this culture by living it. Maybe that's going to make me one mixed-up mess of a returning expatriate, but I wouldn't trade it. I don't want to change it. I'm just afraid that a) people back home won't understand that/have little patience for it and b) I will eventually forget it, too.

I'm pretty sure that the first time someone says to me, "Yeah, but you were only there a year," I'm going to burst into tears (I'm steeling myself for this comment to occur frequently). Because in the grand scheme of my young life, a year is a big deal. Especially one that has changed a lot about me and helped me see who I really am and who I want to be.

So please, I beg you, have patience with me. Cut me a little slack when I cry watching the news, or complain about the availability of papaya, or give into the desire to wear Nigerian clothes for no reason except that a part of me will always feel at home here and I want to preserve that part for as long as I can.

A REAL Update

Since the last two blogs were about chocolate and a hairdryer, and the 3rd contained the phrase "public urination," I think it's time for a more legitimate update.

Teaching is going okay. Teaching ESL is going really really well. My student, G, is 9 years old, as dark as his Nigerian counterparts, drops his s's when speaking Spanish, and hasn't quite grown into his adult teeth yet. The look on his face when he grasps a concept is something I will carry with me forever. Basically, he's a joy to work with and his parents are SO supportive of his learning English.
I learned this week that they are not only making him read in English every night, but they've begun speaking to him in English at home. From a cultural standpoint, I don't know how I feel about this loss of mother tongue, but from a teacher's perspective, he'll learn English a lot faster if it's all he's speaking and reading.
We've discovered that G can read English very well, but he often doesn't understand what he's saying. So today, we did a lot of sound recognition; instead of showing him a picture of an object and asking him to identify it, I read aloud a word and asked him to verify the Spanish translation.
He's learning school-applicable things: the question words (who, what, where, etc.), days of the week and months of the year, colors, shapes, ordinary objects, and simple phrases (how are you, please, thank you, you're welcome). We also study words united by sounds (cat, bat, fat, mat; an, man, fan, pan). We ended the day by walking around the library, pointing at colors and saying them in English and in Spanish.
To be honest, I'm totally making this up as I go along. I have no idea if this is the best way to teach him. I don't know how to teach a child another language. I don't know if I'm helping or hurting his learning with my methods or approaches. But G was happy today. He was smiling and laughing and told me he likes our lessons. And that's a good sign. I'm just trying to focus on G and not worry about compare myself to dwell on my incredible college roommate who is teaching an ESL class of 30 adults back in Chicago and contemplating a future in that line of work. She could teach him more effectively, I'm sure, but I'm doing my best and that's got to count for something.

Another facet to G's arrival at school is that I've adopted yet another set of cultural expectations. Greetings in Latino culture are completely different from American and Nigerian. I've gotten used to the extensive verbal greetings here in Nigeria, but when I saw G's father after school yesterday, he kissed me on the cheek - a perfectly acceptable greeting in Cuba, but unfamiliar in Nigeria! There were Nigerians around us and I think they were a little perplexed!

In other news, homesickness hit like a wall last weekend. I wasn't feeling well--my body has begun resisting spicy food, which is most inconvenient--and for the first time I allowed myself to dwell on how far I've come, literally. It is disheartening to consider the seven-almost-eight weeks I've been here in light of the 58 days ahead of me.
I remember similar feelings during my first semester of college. When we arrived and moved into the dorm, it felt like summer camp; it took a couple months to realize we weren't going home at the end of the summer. It's the same thing here: I've hit the wall, saying, "Okay, I've had my fun, I've learned about the culture, let's go home now." But I can't go home, and this isn't summer camp, and I'm in this for the long haul. God's not finished with me here yet.
So Saturday I just kind of moped around the flat, looking at photos online, letting myself be miserable. Monday night, however, the other ladies in our compound (Mrs. O and Rachel) came over for a visit and asked me to show them all my pictures. It was therapeutic to tell them about my family members and loved ones.
God is so faithful to have built a support system around me whose prayers reach all the way across the ocean. (By the way, you're a part of that system, too! Your comments and feedback on the blog make me feel connected.)

1 Timothy 4:10 "For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe."

Chocolate

I'm not really that kind of girl. I don't crave chocolate, I don't need it on a daily basis. It is not my once-a-month drug, if you will. It's nice, and I'll eat it and I will enjoy it, but I don't feel the driving urge to seek it out and consume ungodly amounts.

Then I went 7 weeks without it.

That's right. I've eaten no chocolate since arriving in Nigeria, and honestly, I didn't really realize I wasn't eating it. Nigerians traditionally don't eat sweets (candy bowls and cookie jars do not exist here), which means chocolate is sold in specialty shops at very high prices. And I really can't justify spending money on candy at my age.

Enter Milka Alpine Milk Chocolate.

This stuff will change your life, folks. One of my expatriate friends, C, was in Germany on business last week and he brought back gifts for everyone. Jan and I received the biggest bar of chocolate I've ever seen. It went straight into the freezer and I more or less forgot about it.

Until 10 minutes ago.

And now the hum of the freezer sounds suspiciously like my name.

Vanity

Forgive me my vanity, but I just blow-dried my hair for the first time in 7 weeks.

And it is glorious.

That's all. I should be doing my work, but I'm not, so there's nothing new to tell. Except my hair dryer...mmm. Love it.