You can't take the Midwest out of the girl...

For the last few days I have been feeling more homesick than usual. Perhaps it’s the number of birthdays I’m missing in the end of April, the fact that I know spring is looking toward summer days in America, or that I’ve actually been busy and unable to really reflect on things until they jump out and surprise me. Whatever the reasons, I’m missing home to a higher degree than I’ve ever felt in all my time living away from home.

Feeling homesick to me is like having a major part of yourself not in sync. You feel out of step, out of place, left behind. That part of you is still attached to somewhere across the ocean and the connecting thread is being played like a guitar string, lurching and swaying, it pulls you off course. For me, the feeling of homesickness is being able to close my eyes and the first thing I see is open highway with the cattle grazing fields stretching out to the horizon. It’s seeing Buffalo Wild Wings and Hollywood 14 theaters. The taillights and streetlights on Wannamaker Boulevard. The long drive up to North Topeka past all the familiar turn-offs and houses, signs and sights that I always thought trivial but are a part of where I come from.

A lot of this recent bought of homesickness is just missing the people in my life. Usually most of the ache is for Colt, a feeling that I have long come to terms with even though it never really gets any better. But this thing lately is a lot bigger than that. Missing him is there, sure, it always is. The last few days, though, I’ve been missing my mom, my dad, Jeni and Stephen, Oliver, Zach and Lucas, Skyler, and especially Josh. My family. Maybe it’s because I feel like we’re once again on some sort of transitional brink and I cannot be there to be a part of it. Maybe it’s because Zach is a teenager now which seems like some overwhelming dive off a cliff into new territory, a slap in the face to how fast time really has gone by. A lot of it is Josh, making big decisions about his future. How I wish I could be there to be a part of those choices. For me, a lot of homesickness often feels suspiciously like guilt. It’s been five years since I’ve lived in Kansas for any length of time and my family dynamic has learned to function without me in it. Of course that’s exactly what is supposed to happen when you grow up. But I feel left out so often, forgotten. And then I just feel guilty when I realize it’s my own fault.

I miss my friends, too. My college friends in a different way from my high school friendships that I have maintained and the new home friendships I’ve built. There’s an assumed fierce independence with my college friends. We’re all out doing amazing awesome things like Teach for America and law school. We don’t really have time to be overly sentimental. We all come from very different regions in the world, too, so there’s no guarantee that our long distance friendships will ever be more than that. There’s a few people I really miss, but college is different than those friendships built up and kept strong for ten years or more.

A lot of my high school friends are also doing amazing things. Graduations, getting real live grown-up jobs, getting married, having babies. Most of those friendships are either strong enough to not worry about too much or have faded over the years of me being so far away from home. A few have rekindled after a few years of absenteeism. Several I have just plain neglected. I’ve also built a few new friendships, mostly through Colt, but still important to me, especially looking to the future (Sydney!). Right now I’m really missing Jen, Aaron, Megan, and Mal. I found some old photos of us from the fall of 2008 and was in tears. I’m not a super sentimental person, but I miss just hanging out and being ridiculous. I’ve never had to pretend to be anyone I wasn’t for them. Finding friendships like that is rarer than you might think and I’m realizing that I’ve taken them for granted for a long time.

The people and the places make up the part of me still tied to Kansas. I facebook surf every few days and am constantly reminded of the way it feels to be home, doing the simple things that just don’t exist here and aren’t missed until they’re gone. So I’m taking stock right now! Here’s what I miss most about home:

Meeting a friend for coffee at starbucks, getting dinner at a bar and grill, BWW, good wine, driving through the countryside with the windows rolled down and the radio blaring, playing on a playground, Gage park, the early Italian brunch at Paisano’s with Colt, Papa Murphy’s cheese pizza, sushi from HyVee, walking up Mass Ave in Lawrence, incense, air conditioning, fresh cut grass, sunflowers, Mallory and Zach and their awesome house, going for a long run in crisp morning air, Chipotle, movie theater popcorn, the fluffy, cuddling, Colt’s mischievous smile, premade clothes and department store smells, Candyopolis, Taco Bell cheesy bean and rice burritos, youtube videos on mom’s iphone with Zach and Lucas, my living room and the people sitting in it, cooking with a full kitchen, cupcakes, making cookies with the kids, visiting Wichita and seeing Jeni and Stephen and Oliver and Dad, playing in Dad’s lab, champagne, Aaron Dean Senne, Juice Stop blueberry and banana smoothies, feeling cold, kisses, Barnes and Nobel, easy internet access, quiche and salad at Annie’s with Sydney, sexy cars, the fabulous Megan Greening and Olive Garden lunches with my favorite ladies, girl talk with Kira, dinners at Colt’s parents house, laying out looking up at the stars in the summer, Kansas sunsets, political protests and civic action, super Walmart and giant Dillons, Skyler and the Sunflower house, everything else about Lawrence, my amazing mom, high heels, wearing contacts and dressing up, feeling clean from head to toe, Jennifer Long, anonymity, football on TV, Cold Stone Creamery, fake meat, cheese, the apartment, Dan and Nick, video games, watching Netflix movies with dinner, enchiladas, snow, Josh and his leather jacket, open fields surrounded by old barbed wire fences, antiques, the way my house smells like home, everything else about Colt Sellens.

I wanted to leave Kansas for so long, to get out, get over the rainbow. I wanted so badly to do the great things I am doing now in Africa, live how I am living with the people I have made my friends. I don’t regret my choices, but I am surprised at how much I feel connected to America, to Kansas. It’s almost like I never expected to feel pride at calling where I come from “home,” but I am proud and I really do miss it with more intensity than I ever have or thought I would. I think I’m growing up a little bit, appreciating my background a little more, giving more credit to the people and the place that made me who I am. That doesn’t mean I ever want to actually live in Topeka again. But being close enough to visit sounds pretty okay to me.

Happy New Year!

January 09, 2011
8:42pm

I have finally gotten back to my place after what has been a month of travels and holidays. Colt has been and gone, we’ve rung in the new year, my three month integration period is officially over, and in less than a week, my stage will have been in country for half a year. Before I delve too much into that whole passage of time thing, I thought I’d let everyone know that this Friday, the 14th, 20/20 is supposed to be airing the special on Kate Puzey’s death. Please tune in and someone send me a copy!

Colt was here for almost 15 days and it feels like we built a little life for us here during his time. Christmas morning was a blur of travel to Djougou and we basically showered and crashed into bed for several hours. I think he had been traveling for like 40 hours or something by that point. We woke up on the 26th and did our Christmas morning then. We took lots of ridiculously adorable photos and made dinner…tacos! Then we basically spent the rest of the week eating local food and watching an insane amount of 30 Rock and Inception (I almost convinced him to let me watch it a third time, but he convinced me to watch some Californication instead). We enjoyed each other’s company and fell into a lovely sort of routine that involved meeting up with some of my friends here, eating too much, and seeing my village. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. New Years’ was rung in with card games, cake, and champagne. Colt read Ender’s Game while I continued to gavage myself with 30 Rock and we started to get a little sick of each other. I think the constant cold showers started to get to him…no hot water and it is damn cold in the mornings here during Harmattan. We smoked some hookah on my roof the last day we were in Djougou and got yam pilee once more with cold cokes and then watched Pineapple Express and giggled like dorks while we cuddled. Ahhh. Then we stayed two nights in Cotonou where we just ate out at all the nice places I can never afford (Chinese, Thai, Lebanese, etc) and his last day we spent at the workstation while I was sick and throwing up for several hours (good timing!). He held me, though, and although we ended up not getting to go out to Indian food that night like we’d planned, it was nice to just spend those last hours alone and close. I did feel sort of guilty though…but I guess I shouldn’t have tried to be so macho and drink the shower water. That’s what I get haha. His flight left on the 7th late at night and he has safely arrived back home and had Christmas with his family. I sent a bunch of random African gifts for him to disperse to various people, just little trinkets and stuff, nothing fancy (I am so broke right now!). It was a wonderful visit, we took lots of pictures and videos, and hopefully the next 8 months and 3 weeks will pass by without hardly any notice at all! Yeah, we’ll see about that. =(

Hmm, let’s see…what else? Big projects are starting to get going now that I’m allowed to really jump into work…several girls and boys camp meetings are going on this month and I am going to get back into going to the health center regularly in addition to my time at the office. I need to get some scrubs made for the maternity so I can help with births, but until then I am going to help out a midwife nurse when she inserts IUDs and Norplant birth control. The Peace Corps has restructured some of its goals so that now what was my primary project (sexual health and family planning) is now technically a secondary project…so I also need to try to get more involved with the maternal health side and do more prenatal consultations and stuff with the midwives. In a really bullshit red tape move, the Peace Corps noticed that volunteers weren’t meeting family planning goals, so instead of giving us more training or directive, they just decided to abolish that program as a major source of focus, thereby making the stats look better, but not fixing the underlying issue. That’s just one example in a growing list of examples about Peace Corps administrative bureaucracy that seriously hinders volunteers’ ability to effectively work abroad. Sigh. Onto more pleasant things…

Er…yeah, I got nothing. Oh! Next month I’m going to Pendjari, the national park, with Andrew and Krista, Eric, and a couple other people. I had originally planned on going with Colt when he was here…but well, that didn’t work out. So too bad for him, I guess I’ll just send him a picture of the awesome lions I’ll see!

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for 6 months already. Time has really flown by it seems and yet it feels like I’ve been here for soooo long. For some reason I can feel like I just boarded the plane from Kansas City a couple weeks ago and also feel like I’ve been here for years simultaneously. I guess it was the same thing in college; day to day felt insanely drawn out, but by the time I graduated, I felt like I’d just blinked and it was over. I do wish I would have savored my time at Wellesley a little more, but I think I did okay. Similarly, I think I’ll do fine here in my looking toward the future and yet relishing my moments in the present. I suppose there will a time when I look back on my service and wish that I would have just been more involved in the day to day small things and knowing that keeps me a little more grounded even though I just want it to be a year from now so badly. The time will come, though, and probably sooner than I think I’ll be saying goodbye.

And when I do…I’ll be a vegetarian again. Because right now…well, I’m not. Not exactly. I’ve decided to be an Afri-tarian. I only eat meat while I’m here in Africa. I’m just so protein deficient especially if I want to avoid palm oil fried wagasi. I’m also basically a vegetarian for economic reasons stemming from the commercial meat industry in the United States, which clearly does not exist here. So I’m eating fish and poultry which I haven’t eaten since 2004. The chickens here are all free range and crustaceans are basically just big bugs anyway. I’m actually sort of grabbing onto meat eating with gusto. I was calling myself a ‘meatatarian’ for a while, especially while gnawing the bones of a particularly tasty guinea fowl when colt was here. I’m planning on enjoying it while I can and reverting back when I finish up here, although there is something to be said about spending my money on free range meat in the United States as it adds an even more forceful economic incentive for companies to use humane treatment of their livestock. I’m not sure, we’ll see.

Moving on…Medical school packets for the advisory committee are due in a couple weeks so I need to really get cracking on that. Hopefully that will keep me busy enough to not count down the days until I see Colt again. I need to have an awesome application so I can go home to interview!

And speaking of that, I wanted to publicly declare that Colt and I are clenched into a competitive battle to lose weight. Whoever reaches their goal weight first gets to decide the number of children we’ll have in the future. This is not a decision he will get to make. Thus I must win. So please, no one send me pasta or sugar. If it’s in my house I’ll eat it, but if it’s not, then I will be the champion. Send Colt, however, lots and lots of goodies. I’ll update my wish list to include canned or packaged tuna and mints instead of chocolate and velveeta cheese…as much as that pains me.

I guess that’s it for now…things should start to get back to a semblance of routine, or at least as routine as is possible in Benin. For example, tomorrow is a voodoo national holiday and I don’t have to go in to work. Hello, Lord of the Rings marathon! My life is sort of awesome, yeah?

See ya when I see ya,

Elaina

Happy Holidays from Africa!

I am here at the Cotonou workstation and everyone is filing out, off to join friends and visitors in various beaches and cities throughout the country. There will still be a few of us in the workstation tonight and we're getting massages later today. I've been setting up my Pandora profile and listening to a lot of holiday music, but there's just something a bit...off...about the season here. It's the warmth, sure, but there's just no Christmas spirit in the air. Up north in Djougou, for example, there are a couple places with lights up, but for the most part, no one celebrates Christmas the way I'm used to. Back home, it's not really just a Christian holiday, it's an American holiday and means a lot more than just Jesus and presents...there's like an aura that fills the streets...and all the music and lights and tinsel and evergreen trees wrapped in stringed sparkles and golden ornaments? Man, that's just not here. Even in the South, where people are largely Christian and put up decorations around the cities, something is missing. There are cheap plastic toys with bright colors and lights everywhere, but it's almost like Benin has captured all the commercialism of American Christmas, but none of the goodwill toward others, love of humanity, doing nice things because it's the season for kindness, and just general Christmas spirit. Maybe it's just because it's still like 90 degrees outside? I don't know, I'm just really missing the smell of eggnog and cinnamon, snow and wintery breezes. I miss that moment late at night on Christmas eve when I sneak out of my room after everyone else has gone to sleep and I can just enjoy the last few minutes before the hectic morning. I sit quietly in the livingroom with all the lights turned off except the twinkling of the lights around the tree illuminating the brightly wrapped presents and casting shadows over the stillness. I love that, just sitting and feeling like there's something like magic so tangible I can almost touch it. That feeling is just. not. here.

But despite all that, I am pretty damn happy right now. Good friends, good drinking, I got some vanilla pretzels in the mail today, all is right in the world. I just watched "I just had sex" by the Lonely Island and I have to say, almost as good as "I'm on a boat." Not quite, but close.

Oh yeah, and Colt's getting here in a few hours. What now, bitches??!

Merry Christmas!!!

Elaina

Nati Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!
I spent the last two days in Natitingou just chillaxing and eating and ended up sick yesterday which sucked. So I stayed last night because I didn't think I wanted to puke on the taxi. But I am good now and we're getting ready to leave to head back to Djougou and thank goodness because I really miss my house and my shower and my food and my bed....mmmmm.

Thanksgiving dinner was decent, potatoes, green beans, and many different kind of pies. We watched Avatar and 12 Monkeys and all was good and relaxing. I really missed the family, though. I think I talked to everyone at some point and definitely spent an insane amount of money on credit...think like a month's worth in one day. But it was totally worth it!

I got packages, too! But only a couple...one from mom and one from Colt's family that had birthday stuff in it. See, they get here eventually!

Sorry this update is so lame; I am using someone's computer and they need it back soon!

Miss and love you all,

E

PS I'm very glad I didn't get Jeffrey Sach's tattooed on me. Just sayin'

Repo in Cotonou

Well, I gave in and just decided to go to Cotonou to see the doctors. I've had sickness feelings for about three weeks now and I just feel generally bad. I was also really homesick last night and I've been extremely frustrated with the trainings lately. I think I just need some time away from Porto Novo and stage for a bit to clear my head and get some meds for my tummy.

I'm also feeling sort of ambivalent about going to Akon. I don't really want to go with just Papa. I don't think it will be worth spending the money to not be with any friends since he hasn't told me anything about whether or not other people can come, too. So whatever. It's not worth 5 mille anyway.

Last night I watched two movies on my computer, Blood Diamond and The Constant Gardener. It was a lot of Africa all at once, but it was so nice to just chill in my room. I also ate dinner at a normal American time and totally took it in my room with me to eat while I watched movies...which was lovely. I was so happy that later, when I was going to bed, all I could think about was how fun it was to watch movies and eat food with Colt (usually pizza...) and I was just suddenly really sad. Then I was thinking about Wellesley and Alex and totally missing hanging out with everyone and I had a moment where I realized that Wellesley was really over and i wouldn't be going back. For some reason that was really upsetting and I spent a lot of time crying about that and about the lack of pizza in my life. I actually called and woke Colt up to cry about it all. He was very helpful and only laughed a little bit.

Now I am actually sort of bored. I don't want to watch all my movies (that I got from my language buddy Matt's hard drive), but I also don't think I'll be meeting with the doctor until later this afternoon. Maybe I'll try to go sleep or something or upload photos. My head hurts!

E