"Over There"

7/30/10

Home. Even the word sounded strange to me. How unfamiliar would it be? How long had it been? Did it matter? Would it matter?

I soar up the green glaciers of Africa. Splinter past the tropical sun, past the jumping Massai in Kenya, through the pyramids of Egypt. My feet dangling over the African world below. Then, over the exotic taste of the Medeterranian, until finally I land into the heart of Italy: Rome.

I hadn't taken a vacation in over a year. The last volunteer to leave Swaziland. I can't recall the last time I had stayed put in one place for so long. Just a few moments ahead, waiting for me, my mother, Jesse, and little sister, Helen. But I had forgotten that also ahead of me was Italy. My life dream had always been to wrap myself in the shade and seduction of this country. The history. The beauty. But all I could think about was their faces. To smell and touch it again. Home home home.

I stand outside the hotel waiting for the airport shuttle to drop my family off. Anticipating.. waiting for our first embrace. Two hours pass and my tiny pea size bladder can't hold it anymore. I move from my spot and hope I don't miss this soon to be epic arrival. I round the revolving door starring down at the fancy tiles along the floor. The door circles round and I am pushed into the hotel lobby. My gaze moves upward and there in front of me I see myself. I see my home. I see my mother. At first I feel nothing. But as she holds me tight in her arms I begin to feel everything again. I feel the fall breeze and the turning leaves of our Indiana autumn. I hear Paul Simon's Graceland playing on our record player in our living room. I feel the wind blowing through my hair as I make the drive down the country roads to my father's house in our convertible. I feel and therefore I am home. The tears stream down my face and an audience gathers. People stare and tilt their heads in sympathy. Stares and curiosity are nothing new to me anymore. This is MY moment.

Inside the streets of this Gucci, Avante Garde city, in my avocado stained jeans, I round every epic corner, pass every epic building. Every inch is art. Instead of Starbucks on each corner there stands a museum. The cobble stone streets, the gargoyles, the weinerless naked man statues, gelato, pizza, pasta, Armani, Gucci bags and toy poodles in every woman's grasp. The beautiful men and women. Suits and heels riding little vespas around town. Their language flowing up and down. Traffic is no headache. Just tiny cars playing with each other. Women begging for change in Chanel. I wait and anticipate the culture shock everyone warned me about. I struggle to look inward this time. Is it effecting me? Am I still human or just another walking zombie, another product of Swaziland? One foot here in Rome, the other still in Swaziland. Two complete opposite worlds. Feel something please. Anything. I need to feel alive again.

I continue to walk up and down these streets, my neck in pain from staring up at the flying buttresses above. As I lower my gaze I am stunned and absorbed by something unfamiliar to me. Something I haven't seen in over a year. An old man stands talking with friends. His overweight yellow lab at the end of his leash struggling to grab a floating plastic bottle in the gutter beneath him. He pulls and stretches. His paws struggling until finally the bottle lands in his mouth. Success. He looks up at his owner, smiling and wagging his tail. The old man pets his proud pup and smiles. I steer off course to follow this smiling pair. Intrigued. People pass and smile. Some stop to pet this chubby lab.

Something begins to move inside me. My heart moves upward and presses against my throat. I struggle to hold back the tears. I am affected. People are happy at this dog's happiness. Connected. I am once again connected. I am feeling again.

My shock didn't come like Tom Hank's in "Cast Away": turning on and off light switches, fascinated by the ease of a lighter. It certainly wasn't the material and ease of Rome that shocked my heart. It was love. Simply love that brought tears to my eyes. Love between a man and his dog. Most of us have gone a long time without seeing love. To go from a country that has found survival in apathy, that literally has no word that distinguishes like from love, to a country that is written about in books and film for its passion, love, and grace. To me, this was the shock. This was that moment. And I allowed myself to sink into it, get comfortable with it.

Suddenly home again. As if I had never left. Swaziland. Peace Corps. Some weird lucid dream I've awoken from. My once 11 year old sister now 16, with a license, bra and attitude. No longer thinks I'm the coolest, smartest, person on the planet. The rest of the world, however, jaws drop when Peace Corps is mentioned. PEACE CORPS AFRICA?! "I can't believe you're over there. They got libraries over there!? And roads too?!" People ignorantly impressed by another charitable organization and your under qualified overachieving work of the past year. You hang on and try to endure the "they got that over there?!" questions. You skim over your experiences over the past year. You take a deep breath when they ask, "What's been your favorite part so far?"

"You know, the other day, I read somewhere that babies can be born from an HIV positive mother without getting it." You think, well duh obviously, when they share facts with you about HIV. But you have forgotten what you once knew before you started this journey. You have forgotten this isn't an AIDS world over here. You go through your old bedroom. Your closet. Your journals. You try to remember who you were before you left it all. It's been a year and you're bitter, angry. Things aren't easy. You realize there is no magic bullet way of fixing anything "over there". People hear the frustration in your voice and struggle to relate, to try and comfort you. But that's not fair, and that's not what you're looking for. You just want to be heard when you haven't been heard in such a long time. "We need to quit blindly throwing money 'over there'." I explain. "Swaziland is AID addicted and we're only making matters worse." My parent's biggest fear. They ask me, "Have you gone republican Mere?!" I could live my life penniless, a lesbian, a pot smoker. "Just don't kill anyone and for gods sake, don't become a republican." They mistake my realistic words for cold, callous, uncaring. When really what anyone who has been 'over there' for more than a few months living IN it will tell you the exact same thing. Our actions need to change because it's not working.

I try not to go into it with anyone beyond the parents. I tap into the bitterness a bit when friends and family ask. I watch their reactions, their faces carefully. Their eyebrows turn in, begin to un-soften and cringe downward. Their lips tighten and their gaze slides off my trailing words. Searching for what to say. Uncomfortable silence. I wrap it up with a quick, "But I'm learning so much over there...." OR "But its been an interesting year and looking forward to the next one." A quick but something.. to give this twisted tale a happy ending for their ease.

My friends embrace me,I hear them exclaim, "MERE!" Something I've waited a long time to hear, fantasizing about it in my hut night after night. I fear they will just be strangers with familiar faces to me. Awkward moments and interactions with x boyfriends. Hugs turn into side hugs. We try to keep it short and simple. Home for a beautiful wedding to tie us all together.

To remind us what we have all been through: the beauty and the pain of growing up together.

The things you regret doing, the things you WILL regret saying once you get back, the break ups, the fights, we have to put those aside for two people’s love. I sit and take stock. They haven't changed in so many ways but in so many ways they have. I fit right back into this puzzle of ours. We sit around the table sharing stories. Sleeves roll up and shirts are lifted. We show off our new tattoos. Like my favorite scene in the movie Jaws. Men bonding over their scars. Do they notice a change in me? Will they still be here when I get back? How much have I missed?

It's the evening before I go back to my world and that last light of the sun smolders blood red against the tops of the green green trees. Their after images are burning blue and black. I think back. This past month feeling so apart of something so familiar and yet, at the same time, so alone, so isolated, so ignored by relation. Sometimes incapable of entering into communication with anyone here. I fear going back. I remember the others telling me they could never go back home in fear they wouldn't return to Swaziland. I reach the deepest animal stages of exhaustion. Non stop going all month. In fact, non stop going since college. I have yet to just be home with my family. Traveling, searching, wanting to connect with every corner and person of this world. Trying to reach out the only way I know how. Finding myself through others.

And we're back. We're back in that moment again. Security and bag check ahead of me. Passport in one hand, carry on in the other. I have to branch off and leave my parents behind, one more time. It's hard for me to look into my sister's eyes. If she sheds even a single tear, I don't know how I'll get back on that plane. I want to tell her I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not here holding your hand while you grow up. I'm sorry I've chosen to be with people who most often don't even want me around. Who don't appreciate. I want to tell her I'll always be her Sissy. I would die for her. I would kill for her. She is my everything. I want to tell my mother that I DO need her. I DO miss her. I am still her little girl. I want to tell my step-father thank you. For EVERYTHING he has EVER done for me. And there's no way I can put any of this gratitude into any sort of audible word. I know if I do i'll collapse and I need to be strong for her, for Helen.

It's harder to leave them a second time. This time I know what I'm getting into. There's no exotic mystery up ahead for me. It's going to be a struggle. And I know it. We hug, and I see them fighting the tears back. I quiver as I try to keep the tears in. We hug. I turn to walk away. I let the tears loose. My mother shouts behind me, "When you come back.... You're back for good!" I turn to her and say, "For good. I promise."

And just like that, their faces were gone. And I was back on that plane. Horrible turbulence. A tiny plane. The irony is, I am horrified of flying. I hold onto the arm rests, I close my eyes, I hold my breath and count as I usually do letting out slow exhales through my mouth. A sweet southern savanna speakin woman pats me on the back. "It's going to be all right suga. We'll get you there. Don't you worry." She asks me where I'm from and where I've been. I don't mind the little conversation this time. I need the distraction. "Peace Corps Africa?! Well God Bless your little heart. Aren't you somethin." She asks me what they eat 'over there'. "Lots of Maize I tell her." She looks confused. "Corn." I say.

"Well goodness me!" She shouts. "They got teeth over there?!"

I land in South Africa. Here we go... I think. "Where are you going?" The man behind the glass asks. "Swaziland." I say. "Swaziland? How long are you visiting?" He asks. "Two years." I tell him. He hands me back my passport. "Well Ms. Brooks. Welcome home."

Shoved, pushed into the back of another kumbi (mini bus). Pressed up against the window, no matter which way I turn uncushioned bone pressed against me. The groaning soundtrack begins and is surrounding me again. The subcontinent's most distinctive gestures follow. "Ahhh wena!" "EEEshh!" They yell. A young man snuggles unnecessarily close to me. I'm missing the decent snug of humanity back home. I'm back in the scent of unwashed humanity after feeling the sterility of the altitude up above. Lost in contemplation. I want it back. I want it back. How am I going to do this?! I snap out of it. I have to. I need to keep moving. I need to be me again. Within twenty minutes I've made friends with everyone on this kumbi. I'm putting myself back together again. "Is polygamy Christian?" I shout. Not that I have a problem with either, just a question to get the ball rolling. Solomon, from the Bible, as usual, is brought up. The same arguments. The same mannerisms.

"What is that written on the back of your neck?" The young man asks me. "Ubuntu." I tell him. They are familiar with this Zulu word. Communal Harmony.Interconectedness. Working together to help each other. "I try to live by it." I tell him. "Well it doesn't matter what it says." He tells me. "You're still going to hell." I laugh. "And all that drinking and screwing around you just told me you do?" I ask. "Well of course, I'm going to hell too. We all are."

I've spent over a year trying to understand and study this culture, these people. I live in constant frustration trying to solve this puzzle with the rest of the world. Keeping this separation between me and THEM use to make it easier. However, being away for a month has made me realize I need to slow down and just appreciate what I'm "studying". I need to stop studying. I probably won't ever solve this problem. But I'm here and I can no longer look at these people as goals, as problems to fix. For the first time, crammed in this kumbi together, shoulder to shoulder with them, I simple saw them as they were. And it was overwhelmingly beautiful.

I said goodbye to my grandfather before I left. In his old age and diminishing health, I worry, will I see him again? He hugs me goodbye and thanks me for my writing that my father shares with him every Sunday morning over breakfast. Before I go he grabs my arm and say to me, "I know you're struggling over there. I know it's hard. But you're learning so much. Don't quit. Don't you dare quit."

I've got another year to go. For my grandfather, for these people, and most importantly, for myself, I know I can't quit.