Sunday, August 21, 2011

Blast-Off

Camp GLOW (girls leading our world) has come and gone already, a more amazing feat when one realizes that this was my last Peace Corps project of my service here in Benin. What a ride it has been. I usually like to think of life as one giant trip, with no clearly demarcated lines seperating the chapters, but instead one infinite ball brimming with whats, cans, maybes, and sheer experience. But how can one deny the emotion of leaving a place just recently become home after two years of following the ebb and flow of what is modern life in Africa. Refreshing it is also. Refreshing to be back on the road again carrying home the spoils of friendships forged along the way. It's really hard to digest what this experience has meant to me, its ethos goes to the core of me and in such a way that can only be felt and not justly explained. Perhaps that's what home is, a feeling of grounded-ness, like the trunk of a tree, to an area. I've reached out across the waters and dropped a complimentary anchor on a people I had no idea existed before, I say complimentary because my roots rightly stem from the Midwest where my people are, but being here has opened my eyes to what it means to make a family, to forge one's roots where before there were none. Where before I was just a strange man living in a strange village, I leave feeling like a son leaving home. A place exists in its people. When I think of home, it's the faces that come up, the experiences, good and bad. Those are the places that mean something to me, a place that flows organically from the names and faces of those dear to me, and because of this, is always apart of me. Thursday is the blast-off. Look out, 'cause here I come.