Reflecting on the First Year
This year is ending,
Days are passing,
My feet keep moving,
From a plane carrying excitement I came to call
Home a place that challenges
Everything I had come to believe.
My feet kept
Moving in a young school still establishing rules and
Embracing dreams of shaping students who will be the
Change the country wants to see. Finding that
My feeble lessons can’t compare to what
Students can teach me,
My feet
Kept moving. Learning the
language, customs and culture but still
Failing to understand the corruption, poor leadership and
disorganization my
Western lens makes me see.
Believing that
Solidarity can break through the iron bars of individualism and living
in
Community can help us push past these sins.
My
Feet kept moving through the
streets and markets and
Homes of people who know that Love has no conditions.
Accepting invitations to enter another’s home and try to see the world
as
They do and then striving to give in return the greatest gift of
Presence to
Let them know I love them too.
Everything I have come to believe:
Students can teach me;
Community can help us push past these sins;
Let them know I love them too.
My feet keep moving,
Days are passing,
This year is ending.
....
Truly, it amazes me I have finished one year as a Jesuit
Volunteer. How am I sitting with
this? I ask myself. Well, I have hardly had time for sitting with
anything. The past month has been packed
with activities of receiving new volunteers, closing the school year, attending
farewell parties for the departing volunteers, cleaning and reorganizing our home,
cooking Christmas dinners, hosting friends, students and other volunteers and attending
choir practices for the holiday season.
There is a kind of newness to everything now as I approach trips to the
market, fabric shops and church activities as the “experienced” second-year and
I am beginning to realize how much I have learned in this past year and how honest I
feel in calling Dodoma my home. In the
same breath I feel a stronger longing for the friends, places, and experiences that I
left in the U.S. just over a year ago as if the more comfortable I am in Dodoma, the more
distant I feel. It’s funny how that
works, like the Christmas trees of Dodoma which bloom just before the rain
season and lose their flowers only days before December 25th- I
thought I had prepared myself for this transition into a second-year volunteer
since the annual Re-Orientation/Dis-Orientation retreat in October, but just
before the actual transitions came I lost all the security I worked so hard to
build and was left naked to merely be a part of the changes as they
happened. I think this is part of the process of Ignatian detachment: the letting go of planning how we want to
respond to something, admitting to others that our intentions to stand strong
with our insecurities covered come from feelings of pride and desire for
control, and allowing ourselves to be fully present to the people and
activities around us and the feelings that stir within us.
The year 2015 will bring many more new experiences, new friendships, a
new teaching assignment at St. Peter Claver High School and eventually a move
back to the U.S. All of this ahead, and
the experiences and memories of 2014 are still waiting to be processed. When the Christmas trees bloom in Dodoma,
their red flowers are the beauty of the dry, dusty land. Heavy rains come soon after their blooming
and falling and now all the trees and bushes are flowering and turning the
desert of Dodoma into a beautiful oasis dotted with hues of yellow, purple, and
pink. By the law of nature we have to
let go of our attachment to the red Christmas flowers in order to see the
beauty offered by other trees and plants.
This advent season I’m letting go of my own red flowers of security and
comfort that I found this year- some healthy, others not- so that I can open
myself to the beauty in the people and experiences around me- some new, others
familiar- and I’m believing that these changes will bring joy if I allow myself
to see it.
Happy New Year
