Category Archives: musings

homecoming

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I’ve got one more update to write about my day in Dallas, and my last night in Austin, and I have many more pictures to share. But I’m getting on a plane in less than eight hours and I’ll be back in Maine by this time tomorrow.

And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my family and I have missed them, I’ve missed our house, and I’ve missed everything about our little domestic unit.

But I can’t remember a trip where I’ve felt so torn about leaving, and so willing to ditch everything and just be here. I’m not saying it means anything – I don’t know if it does. I just know what I told Kayla tonight: this has been a really *big* year for me, and whatever ends up happening, this trip was significant.

Other than that, I’m not sure what else to say.

Thank you, Austin. For being awesome.

the bitter and the sweet: reflections on life abroad

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Doug and Mike just returned from a trip to Haiti, delivering tarps and other supplies to people still living in ramshackle tent communities over four months after the earthquake. Doug’s latest blog post about processing the trip, and the mixed emotions that follow, really brought me back to the way I’ve felt after my last few trips.

It was AMAZING.

It was heartbreaking.

It was…something.

Even writing about it now, almost a year after our most recent trip to Africa, it’s still difficult to describe my feelings in any meaningful way.

Yes, it was fun. We had dance parties at Juvi. We played Hangman and Bata, Bata, Kuku (Duck, Duck, Chicken). The kids were brilliant and funny, and full of smiles. I got fist bumps from Rastafarians who loved my dreads. We sang the same Swahili songs over and over around the campfire and slept under gaze of Kilimanjaro. The people were generous and friendly, the country was warm and beautiful. It was one of the most amazing months that I have ever had and I wouldn’t trade it or change it for anything.

When people want to hear about my trips, these are the stories that I share. The giant trampoline that we assembled in an empty lot in the middle of Timisoara, Romania, and all of the kids that came to check it out. It was a regular neighborhood party. Or the camp we helped to run in Ethiopia; probably the craziest week of my life, and also one of the most memorable.

But there is always the other side.

Always there, in every memory, and in the fabric of every story.

The events that I need to process, the emotions that I need to let out.  I want to tell people that this was not a vacation. These were not just happy foreign children grateful for our awesome whiteness. How our presence, our time, our gifts, all seemed so very small in the face of so deep a hurt and so great a need.

I must also give words to the experiences that have left me shaken and profoundly changed.

Yes, Romania was amazing…but do you know what encountered us on the streets?

Yeah, Ethiopia was incredible. But have you ever been to an AIDs orphanage?

More than anything, I want people to know the people that I met, to hear their stories, to understand their lives.

Because all of this good and all of this bad was all mixed in there together. You can’t separate one from the other. When we were setting up that trampoline, we were also giving granola bars to kids who may not have eaten anything else that day. I played games with kids in the same place where, just a short time before, I had held a dying infant in my arms. I taught the most amazing kids at Juvi, all the while understanding that they were in Juvi, and not being sure if I could handle knowing what really went on when the volunteers weren’t there.

These nightmares about things you saw one afternoon when you were 18 – these are things that people live with. And when I talk about how warm and generous they are, it’s not just a front and it’s certainly not shallow. It’s the generosity that comes out of having lost everything. It’s the warmth that comes from believing that every person around you is your family. It is a truer and deeper thing than I know.

Because it’s more than just “good”. It’s deeper than that. It’s truer than that. It’s GOD.

God pouring out of every smile, every hug, every song. A God who loves the poor, and cares for the widows and orphans. A God who was there in that AIDs orphanage. Who was there in that bus in Romania. A God who, I know, is big enough to cover all of this.

And yet…

Usually, when I write, I come to some sort of conclusion that relieves the tension of the questions I’m asking. I have no such conclusion today. I don’t know that I ever will.

It still hurts. It’s still sad. It’s not right.

The only conclusion I have is this: I don’t get it. I just don’t. But I do trust God. I have faith and I have hope and I believe that one day I might understand. It just may not come this side of heaven.

2009: a year in review

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On January 1st I started a photo-a-day project. Day 3 was a photo and blog post about my new favorite show, Doctor Who, on the same day that they announced the new actor for the next series. I’m still pretty sad about it.

January 2nd, 2009: “I’m feeling restless today. I’m not sure what to do with myself, my free time or this new adult-sized age I’m now inhabiting.”

January was when I decided that photography made sense. I wrote a lot about school with Hannah. Together, we watched the inaguaration of President Obama.

I got a cold and discovered the joys of the Neti pot. January rolled into February: “Life is mellow, but good.”. February rolled into March and Lent began. I bought a new netbook, dove into Terry Pratchett’s novels, saw the much-anticipated Watchmen in theaters, and ended my 365 project on Day 72. Stephen and I saw Flogging Molly in concert (and we’re still reeling from how awesome it was). Battlestar Galactica ended its run. I had fun getting noticed at the grocery store.

March 29th, 2009: “In a little over a month, I will be in Arizona. In exactly three months, I will be flying to London. My dreadlocks are 10 months and 8 days old. I’ve uploaded almost 3,500 photos to flickr. I’ve rated over 1,500 movies on Netflix. I have 202 friends on Facebook and 16 followers on Twitter. I’ve worked at the hospital for five years. I’ve been an Orthodox Christian for almost three years. I’ve been a college graduate for less than one year.”

April brought with it warm weather, songbirds, and the surest sign of spring. We celebrated Pascha and Hannah turned 15. Dad and I saw the Doobie Brothers in concert (for free!). In May, we went to Phoenix together and rode a motorcycle to the Grand Canyon. Hannah finished her school year. I started preparing for our next big adventure.

In June, I shot my first engagement session and decided that, Yes, I really do want to do this. A lot of things were making me happy. On June 20th, Kayla got married. On June 29th, Stephen and I flew to London. We rode the Big Bus and the London Underground, and discovered that the true purpose of a hostel is to give you stories to tell for years to come.

On July 3rd, we flew from London to Nairobi and spent possibly the longest and most uncomfortable 13 hours of our lives in the Nairobi airport. On July 4th, we flew from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro and settled into our homebase. It didn’t take us long to fall completely in love with Tanzania. My volunteer placement was teaching the kids at the Juvenile Detention Center, while Stephen was placed at Uwawayaki.

The four weeks we spent in Moshi were challenging, heartbreaking, exhilerating, frustrating, wonderful and beautiful. I still look to the horizon and miss seeing Kilimanjaro. We will never be the same.

We stopped in London again on the way home, spent more time exploring Camden, saw Harry Potter in Soho and shared a drink with Marg. We came home on August 4th, and the rest of the month blurred into September. Hannah started school again. I celebrated an anniversary, of sorts. In October the leaves began to turn and I had another session, this time with a friend’s daughter.

October 17th, 2009: “Lose a hobby, gain a passion.”

I started a website and began writing a business plan. October and November were dedicated to following this new path, and soon, it was December. We got a fish. I took photos of the first snow. We had one very, very bad day (which redeemed itself in the end). Christmas was wonderful. I turned 25. And we bid kwa heri to 2009.

One amazing year.