This is my last blog post of the Rafiki On Safari series encompassing my adventures and life in Tanzania, Africa. This post really doesn’t have much to do with Tanzania, but about me and the person I became by studying abroad.
When people ask me how my experiences studying abroad in Tanzania went, I respond with the cliche ‘the experience of a lifetime’ and tell some other details if asked. But in all honesty, how do I sum up this experience of a lifetime in a three-minute conversation? To start off, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Tanzania. The smallest detail in my day will remind me of some memory of my experiences and suddenly I am a million miles away, racing in a land cruiser with the zebras and giraffe across the open plains of the Serengeti, or interviewing African witch doctors, or sitting on a rocky outcrop watching the sun set as Maasai go about their daily lives in their bomas. It’s incredible, really, how the tiniest detail can bring back a flood of memories. Being in Tanzania was a dream come true and I learned so much about myself and about life in general. Although I am back in the U.S., it still hasn’t hit me yet that this is my reality. I feel caught in a liminal stage - on one hand I am overjoyed to be back at Lawrence and at home with my friends, family, and the life that I know and feel comfortable with. But on the other hand, something has changed, or maybe it’s just me. For the past five months, I haven’t stayed in one place longer than four weeks and now I’m back at school taking classes, being involved in campus organizations, and living the life of the American college student. This new reality seems still so surreal. Although I have managed to take reverse culture shock in stride, sometimes in unguarded moments the concept of missing Tanzania hits me like a very real ache in my chest.
In closing, I feel so unbelievably blessed and lucky to have experienced what I did and have such an amazing base of family, friends, and faith. I would not have traded my time in Tanzania for the world - even getting malaria seems just another piece of the puzzle. I feel, somehow, that I was always meant to go to Tanzania, to live and study there and experience a life completely out of my comfort zone and to continue to develop into the person that I was meant to be. Someday, I know not when, I will return to Tanzania to reclaim to piece of myself that I left there.
