Gratitude

I was given a special gift when I flew out of South Africa. The Soweto Gospel Choir, which is really famous, happened to be on my plane and as we landed in Amsterdam, they sang several amazing songs. It was a surreal end to my African adventure. I have been home just under 2 weeks and I am in the process of processing. Its taken me awhile to blog about being home because I have so many random and jumbled up and inconsistent thoughts that I wasn't sure how they would end up once written. But tonight I am babysitting for my friends and thought I would take the opportunity to try to compose something.

Many people have asked me how I am dealing with reentry, culture shock, whatever you want to call it and I have to say that I am very happy. I was trying to figure out recently why I am so happy and I have come up with a few things. First of all, as mentioned before, I really think I thought I would die or something terrible would happen on this trip. If you go back to my very first blog posting, you can read about all of my irrational fears and I have realized that although I absolutely love traveling, there is a bit of stress involved. Everytime I got on a crowded minibus, I prayed that we wouldn't crash (for good reason, as one of my drivers was drinking which I didn't realize until I was getting off!), everytime I swam in the lake, I would frantically scan around pray there was no crocodile, I prayed a lot to ward off snakes, I prayed in Joburg that noone would mug me or carjack me. In general, I prayed a lot. Which brings me to why I am so happy. I AM ALIVE! And I get to hang out with my family and friends again and enjoy lattes and walks on the street. Anyway, it made me realize that God is trustworthy and that I can trust Him to take care of me. It was like, "wow, God we did it!".

Secondly, I am finding it hard to complain about anything or be too stressed when in the grand scheme of things, I have a really good and easy life. I met women in Africa who have to prostitute themselves just to feed their children or have contracted HIV because their husband had an affair, or have essentially no freedoms or choices in their lives. And I for some reason, was born in a country in this century, with my family, where I have endless choices and freedoms. Even though I am a bit stressed thinking about the future and having to start a new job and what is next...at least I have choices. I have choices to eat what I want and can get it in two minutes instead of having to eat cassava everyday and work really hard to make it. I have the choice of whether or not to have children. I can stay single if I want and never have to deal with a man having control over me or exposing me to diseases. It's pretty incredible when you think about the millions of women in the world who don't have choices. I'm going to go off for a moment on this because it was the issue that frustrated me the most and made me feel the most helpless so bear with me. Many people here often think of HIV/AIDS as a disease that people get because they are sleeping around or something else that makes it a disease that affects "them" and lets us judge people and not have to actually do something about it. We have compassion for the innocent children with it and the orphans, but not always so much when we think about adults. But the majority of women I met were just as innocent. They are victims of poverty and simply being women. They got this disease because their husband brought it home to them even though they will often be blamed by their husband. They got it because they had to prostitute themself for the most basic necesity of life. I truly believe that the reason Africa is facing an HIV epidemic is because of poverty and women's rights, which is linked to poverty. Not to say that we should have less compassion for anyone with HIV, but maybe because I am a woman, it especially upsets me. Basically, I'm incredibly grateful that I can choose who I marry and when, and get out of bad situations, and be independant of men.

Thirdly, I am grateful for family and friends. I haven't had to worry about a place to stay because so many people have offerred and it has been great catching up with people. I don't know about the future yet. Have a few ideas, but will take some thinking and praying. I know I want to go back. As frustrated as I may sound at times, I absolutely love Africa and can't imagine not going back. I think I'm also happy because I finally realized that this is what I want to do with my life. It gives me purpose. But, I don't know when or how or where. I don't think it will be for awhile and I know I will always want to return home for extended periods of time. I just want to enjoy the process. Catching up with people and moving onward in this crazy journey.