This past Friday marked my 1 year anniversary of being in Senegal.One year ago I started this adventure, along with the rest of my training group. We came together for staging in Philadelphia, met each other for the first time, with all of our physical and mental baggage, with all of our optimism and dread, anxieties and excitement and eager naiveté.
I can still see the carpeted hallways of that Holiday Inn in the historic district, the pink hue of the conference room, and the flip chart paper we taped to the walls, with our hearts out there in the open, having been asked to draw our hopes and fears. We rode the bus to New York, checked in all our luggage, and boarded the plane. And after over 36 hours of being in transit, we landed in the still warm night of Dakar.
There were so many times in the last year when I thought I was surely not going to make it this far, when I doubted all the reasons I had for coming, and wanted nothing more than to go home. And I don't think that those moments of doubt are completely behind me - but I know now what to expect. I don't expect to encounter too many new challenges and changes over the next year. Just the same challenges, over and over, ad infinitum. That will be the biggest challenge perhaps: knowing what I'm facing, and keeping optimistic in spite of it. In spite of everything.
I still think this is the right decision for me, to be here, now. Yes, I do miss America and my friends and family there sometimes so much that it seems like my heart is just going to burst. But if I think about leaving here right now I am filled with an equally deep sadness, because there is still so much I want to try to do here before I would feel at peace with stepping away and moving on. I feel that here is where my life is now.
So I stay on, and look ahead. To this next year. May it be everything I hope it can be.
1 comment:
Yay, Alexis, you are doing awesome! If you still feel there is stuff for you to do there then do it, do everything you want, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I am hoping to come back for a week sometime to really give something back to the people in my own way, with the skills I am learning now - massage therapy! Hoping to bring a bunch of therapists with me. Saw a real need for it while I was there. I am so proud of you and everyone from our stage, everyone there in general! Wow, a year. I am so happy for you, you continue doing your thing as long and as much as you can, you and the others are really making a difference there. Aloha! Love, Trace PS I MISS YOU YOU ARE AWESOME!!!
Post a Comment