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I’m really tired right now, but I’m trying to stick the plan of being awake in the daylight and sleeping when it gets dark. I think I messed it up by waking up at 5AM, but we roll on, right?
Like I said in my post yesterday, I don’t want to fly for a long long time. I think I had about 30 hours total of travel, from leaving Spain to London, spending the night in ice cold Gatwick airport, flying from LGW to Dallas, and then finally to SFO. My body was screaming at me on the stretch from Dallas to SFO. I was running to gate 39 and to my surprise, I made it. I came in all hot and puffin from it, and my stomach started to ache. So, I asked the flight attendant if it was cool to use the bathroom at the moment, and she said it was cool. I whizzed and then I figured that my stomach would be OK. Wrong. So I had to go back again after holding down the pain as the plane took off to cruising altitude.
Man, talk about painful. So, finally we got up to some sort of cruising altitude, and I paged the Flight Attendant if I could go to the bathroom at the moment. She was cool with it. And I was thinking to myself: What am I thinking? If I need to go, I should just go. So after a while in the closet-called-a-bathroom, I come out strangely better. Strangely because I felt really really cold. I end up putting on like 4 layers of tshirts and I’ve got 2 blankets wrapped tight around my body. Still, I’m shivering like I’m at the North Pole chilling with the penguins. It takes me almost 2 hours before I fall asleep and warm up. I think my body was really mad at me for traveling like so.
I finally warmed up, and we finally touched down in San Francisco. It was great to see the Bay Area again. It was really sureal to know that one week ago I was traveling away from West Africa, and 24 hours ago, I was in Spain perusing my way through La Sagrada Familia. I called up Avery and he picked me up.
So, I’m back.
I plan to do nothing for 2 weeks intentionally. I know myself well enough that I’m gonna be lost and it’s going to be hard. I’ve kind of gone through something like this before, but I’ve never been to Africa, and I’ve never made friends that I may never see again.
I wrote a lot about the pain in the long travel, but I think there’s a deeper pain that occurs when we travel so far so quickly. It’s crazy to me that we are able to end up on the other side of the world under 24 hours. My body’s rhythm cried out to me, but I know that my heart is beginning to sweat and ache as my skin and stomach have earlier in the trip. I’m not sure how it will look, or when it will happen, but I know that there’s a deep sadness that will make it’s way out of me. I guess I’ll need to put a couple more t-shirts on, be OK with going to the bathroom, sleep a little and hope
Hey there. I’m officially back on US soil ( and I’m not talking about the US embassy in Freetown ). I’ll write more tommorow about travels, jetlag, and airports. I don’t want to fly anywhere for a long time. Good night!
Greetings from Barcelona, Spain. Actually, I´m staying at Villafranca del Penedes which ( I think ) is a bit south of the big city of Barcelona. It´s been good to be here with Mao-Mei and Isaac — folks I´d gotten to know during my time in Oakland. Actually, I hadn´t spent all that much time with them, but I think if they would´ve stayed longer in Northern California, I´d probably have gone deeper with them. All to say that they´re really good folks, and I´m grateful to be here in Spain, one step closer to the ominous USA (aka home).
I´m staying at a Pensio (cheap hotel room) about one block away from where Mao-Mei and Isaac stay. Up the block from me is a huge church that´s so beautiful! We stopped into look a couple nights back, and I swear I almost cried when I went inside. It was as beautiful inside as it was on the outside: the ceiling vaulted high above, there were red candles lit on the sides, and the inside was huge. It was dark, quiet, and eerily serene. There was something holy and glorious in that space. I hope to spend some more time there before I leave.
So far, I feel like this side trip is a real blessing. My accomodations are awesome: I´m in between my friends and this awesome church, the air is cool and comforting, I´ve been eating a lot of good food, watching a lot of World Cup Football and I´ve just had a lot of down time to look, listen, sleep, and settle in. My two goals for my time here are to: 1. see La Sagrada Familia and 2. to spend more time at that church. Actually, my other side goal is to also watch a lot of World Cup football, but I´m already achieving that goal quite well! I´m grateful for this place of rest.
It´s really beautiful here. I really like the architecture, and the classic, quaint Spanish style. There are a lot of big beautiful churches, revolutionist graffitti ( I´ve actually missed good graffitti ), and a quiet quaintness that´s really different than Freetown. I really like the architecture, and I think today, when I go into Barcelona with Mao-Mei, I´ll see a lot more things that I like. I´ll try to take lots of pictures.
It was hard leaving Freetown. I´ll hopefully get some more time and space to think about it, but it´s been hard to say so many goodbyes all at once. Bye to friends from Sierra Leone. Bye to my friends on the servant team. Bye to WMF friends: Faye, Cami, and Joe and Mindy. Bye to Pastor Zizer, Auntie/Momma Marvel, Marvick, Marvin, and Marvina. The crazy part ( I was telling the servant team ) is that we may never see some of these folks again. Even with my servant team friends, things will just be different. We all live far away from each other.
I started to get really emotional when we left the Zizer´s house on Friday to go to into town with all of our bags. I ended up giving Marvel ( my African Mom ) a second hug on the way out. Marvina was waving, and Marvin buried his head into mom´s side as we drove away from the house. I started to feel the tears welling up inside of me as I knew that I might never see these friends again. I pushed them back, thinking that I´d have more tears to shed as today would be full of goodbyes. Sometimes I think it´s stupid to quench those feelings because I know they´ll come out someway or another.
The rest of the day continued to be smiles, laughs, some more pictures, some more pictures (Faye, that one´s for you – sorry we took so long to leave! ) and some more welling up inside. The youth at Lighthouse sang a song to us ( about how leaving makes us cry ), and then folks took time time to say their goodbyes individually. Each person on the servant team had a chance to share a bit too, and it felt kind of like the campfire at the end of summer camp where everyone cries. Haha. I ended up welling up and saying some sort of jibberish in Krio about how I´m grateful for each person and how God´s blessed me to spend life with you. It´s hard to communicate when I´m a mess like that. I think the tears and snot speak louder than any words that I can muster up, especially in another language.
Then there was goodbye to WMF staffers, then goodbye to Faye at the Lungi airport, and then goodbye to my teammates at the Gatwick airport. I´ll miss a lot of how life was in Freetown, and I think that will kind of get sorted out once I´m back in California. I have to remind myself to breathe in, breathe out, and hope.
I´m grateful that the well went deep. At the end of the trip, I was blessed to cry because I feel like the tears that welled up inside of me spoke of my own sadness to leave people and a place that I´ve grown to love.
I’m leaving Freetown this Friday. I’ll be headed to Gatwick, England, then spending about a week in Barcelona, Spain, and then back to good old California. I’m not sure if I’ll have much time to write before I leave. I feel like I’m squeezing precious time just being here. So, please keep me in your thoughts for good goodbyes and stuff. I feel like I have a lot of emotions swirling around: I really hate goodbyes. Any thoughts? Miss ya, See ya soon!?
Today started slow. Woke up feeling sickly ( I know… again) with a sore throat and stuff. The one thing I like about being sick is that weird state of tiredness. Sleep feels real good, and I don’t really exert myself that well. I think being sick’s like that: my body limits me so I’ll rest and recover. It’s weird to catch a cold when it’s so hot all the time. Granted, it rained really hard on and off the last week or so, and I really think my body hasn’t liked it, even though I really like the coolness. Hopefully this will blow away soon ( like these storms) and I’ll be well to make the most of these last couple days.
It’s crazy to think that we only have 11 days left here in West Africa. Though I have a lot less anxiety about leaving and also readjusting to life in the US, I’m slowly realizing that I’ll miss a lot of people here. I won’t miss life’s difficulties, but I will miss the rhythm of life: there’s always a story to tell everyday. There are parts of my life that I really love. I love going to Kroo Bay to be with the kids, Noah, Florence, and Aunty Ama. The kids haven’t been listening that well, but I don’t know: I think that’s just part of life. I think I’ve grown in my discipline through a lot of different experiences and I’m grateful that my past experiences have really carried over from Mission Year, and teaching, and working at New Hope.
I think God has been real good in encouraging me in this journey of my life. I feel a lot of anxiety about settling into something/someplace/etc. for a longer period. I get weary from all of this exploration and wandering, and there are times when I wish that I have a better sense of home and place. I’m still learning to choose for joy in spite of my feelings, and hopefully one day I’ll be understand myself enough so that my ups and downs won’t be so taxing. There are two points that I feel that God has whispered encouragement in my life while here in Africa. One is when Joe and Mindy came back from the USA for their leave. We were in a circle to welcome that back and the question on the table was: What are some things that you’ve been learning while they were gone? David (who I am blessed to teach art stuff to) said (in Krio): “I learned fine fine fine things from Benjamin in class.” It was a small thing, but my heart broke open and joy spilled out into bloodstream. I can never tell how the guys take my class. Sometimes I think it’s all for nothing, and I can’t figure out if they’re getting anything out of it. And then today, David was finishing up his painting of himself (which looks awesome) and when he finished, he said (in English): “Thanks man.”
My heart broke open again. I was surprised to hear him say “Thanks man” because that’s like american slang. I smiled big: inside and out. I was so greatful to receive his grattitude.
There are a lot of other ways that God has spoken to me here and I want to continue to tell the stories of pain, struggle, joy, and hope. I am grateful to be able to take part in these stories.
We’ll be away for a couple days for our ending retreat. Please continue to pray and hope for us as we finish our time in Freetown.
