On Homesickness

I think I’m a bit of an expert on homesickness at this point. After all, Oakwood was home for 18 years, and since then, I’m not sure I’ve ever really been home since. Oh, there were visits and summers, but for the last six years, anywhere I’ve been has been temporary, whether it was Maryland, Texas, or Atlanta. When my parents moved to Atlanta while I was in study abroad, it made visits back to Ohio that much less like coming home.

I have to say, I started to feel like UMD was home. I was in my element in college, and I had a great group of friends to rely upon. So most of college, I wasn’t homesick. I was definitely homesick when I got there, though. Why would I pick up and go so far away when I could have just stayed somewhere in Ohio and had at least a few friends to start with? My choice to go to Maryland was just the first of many choices that demonstrate something that is always in my mind:

It would be so easy to live a boring life.

Going to UMD made me find friends I hadn’t known since preschool. Working in Texas made me find new friends, and it also forced me to spend a lot of time just with myself. Going to Toulouse, studying engineering in French, challenged me to become bilingual, to stretch my intellectual capabilities. But by far the biggest leap I’ve taken was joining Peace Corps.

At Maryland, in Texas, in Toulouse, I often felt homesick in the beginning. It was normal, it was growing pains. Then I adapted to my new world, found my stride, and never looked back.

Peace Corps hasn’t been that comfortable. I felt the normal homesickness in the beginning, the craving for mom’s food and conversations with friends. The feel of sleeping in my own bed and waking up to a predictable world. Then, things started to get more familiar and routine during training. And then, of course, it was time to move again. This time, this move, was further away from anything resembling home, that I expected my homesickness to stick around longer than normal.

In some ways it did, and in some ways it didn’t. I think I adapted pretty well to my site. I have my routines and my friends, my market ladies, my gas station treats. I think I was a fairly capable teacher, too, within the context of the Guinean education system. But I have never hit my stride. I have never reached my element. I confess, I am not thriving in Peace Corps.

Oh, I wouldn’t trade this for the world. And I have good times. I’m just saying that I am trying to be the best version of myself in this situation, and I am failing. I hate failing. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t fail. I fail so rarely or so minimally that sometimes it feels like I must be able to do anything if I just try hard enough. I am trying. I am failing. When people in my town tell me that I should stay another year, I joke that I can’t because my mother would cry (you would, right, mom?). But really, I can’t stay, because I can’t do this for another year. I can do it for 3 more months, and I will, and in that way, I will have “succeeded” in Peace Corps. I find myself struck by terrible homesickness, for the entirety of my service, where I just wish I could be in a familiar, comfortable place. I wish I could be at home. I’m not even sure where home is. It’s the homesickness that tells me I haven’t truly succeeded here. I am walking a mile in what is only approximately a Guinean’s shoes, and I can’t do it.

Enormous amounts of the world’s population lives a life thousands of times less opulent than mine. Women all over the world are hit on by strangers every day of their life. (Don’t worry about me, it only happens weekly and I just learned how to say “Your dick is small” in Susu.) Many of my friends and neighbors live with illness and pain and disfigurement, with no treatment, and yet manage to lead full lives.

It’s pretty damn humbling to fail at something you are doing on purpose, when others with no choice carry their burdens so well.

You could say that my life is trying. Or difficult. Or challenging. Good things, too, like rewarding and surprising and enlightening. You could say I’m having trouble. You could say my life is tough, at the moment.

But you could never, ever, not in a million years, say that my life is boring.