note to self: you're living the dream. don't forget it.

I just wrote a rather lengthy diatribe about my recent frustrations, including, but not limited to: encountering fundraising roadblocks that feel downright insurmountable, rallying (with little success) against misplaced priorities that are hurting our students, witnessing Ministry of Education officials laughing about endemic sexual violence in schools, witnessing my own headmaster announce that boys deserve education more than girls do, witnessing countless people declare that women wearing trousers turn good men into rapists, fending off my own share of increasingly weird unwanted advances, and seeing an uglier side of myself come out -- one who suspects the worst in people, who gets stingy with smiles in order to protect herself, and who loses her emotional balance and proclaims someone else's beliefs "patently ridiculous."

But then I made a misclick and everything I wrote disappeared. I'm going to take that as a sign.

Here's what's really good right now.

I'm learning cool things in beautiful places.

I'm having adventures.

I live somewhere where THIS is just a short ride away from...

...this.

...and this.

And most of all, I have this wildly wonderful job where I get to spend my days talking about books and words with sweet, hilarious people who desperately WANT me to be there. 

And I get to bring my dog to work. 

an alphabetic tour of life as of late

A is for absurdity, which colors my life with a heavy brush these days. Here’s a sample.

            A conversation in the staff room:

Mrs. Mbowe: “Jaime. I must ask you something. It is quite serious.”

Me: “Sure, of course, what is it?”

Mrs. Mbowe: “Well, are you sure I’m not disturbing you?”

Me: “Of course not, go ahead, please.”

Mrs. Mbowe: “Okay, well, I must ask you: Why does Chalo not wear shoes? How can you let your son walk without shoes?”

My headmaster, during a beginning-of-term assembly, threatening our students about the dangers of violating the dress code: “I WILL SWALLOW YOU ALIVE.”

There’s this new kid in my neighborhood – surely no older than ten – and he has inordinate spunk, this sort of intimidating aura of confidence, and an inexplicable London accent. His name his Gomez, and he is a fascinating mystery to me. Our first conversation went like this:

Kid [looking up from a game of marbles as I walk by]: “You failed to introduce me.”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Kid: “You failed to introduce me.”

Me: “Who?”

Kid: “You. To me.”

Me: “Oh. I’m Jaime.”

Kid: “Gomez.”

Me: “Gomez?”

Kid: “Gomez.”

Me: “That’s a Mexican name.”

Kid: “Thank you.”

B is for bananas, which I will confidently assert are the most consistently mediocre of fruits. (Mushy, disagreeable texture and a sweetness that, though not exactly unpleasant, is definitely forgettable? Ugh. Give me a mango, a fruit that exists on purpose.) But I’m definitely in the minority here, because when the banana-selling ladies come around, the air in the staff room changes in a big way. One teacher announces, “Ntochi! Ntochi are here!” and the others pop up from their desks like prairie dogs, echoing “Ntochi ntochi ntochi!” and hurrying out to get a look before anyone else. Malawians do not, as a rule, like to hurry, but they do when bananas are involved.

As a loyal customer of the avocado man, the mango ladies, and the occasional guava woman, I don’t go out to see the banana ladies anymore. I have not gone out to see the banana ladies since November, actually. But this pattern seems to escape the other teachers, whom I still have to explain it to every time the bananas come. Every. Time. It is now April, and I had to explain it again today.

“Jaime. Ntochi. Bananas are here.”

“Oh, yes, thank you, I know – I just don’t really like them that much.”

A ripple of surprise. “What?” “What do you mean?” “You don’t like bananas?” “She doesn’t like bananas?!”

“…no, not really.”

“But you must! It is so good to eat bananas! There are so many kinds – sweet, very sweet, not really sweet, fat, very fat, very very fat…”

The best part is when the teachers walk back in with their bounties: armfuls and bunches of bananas of different sizes and colors. They always have big anticipatory grins on their faces, and they sometimes even pump their fists, cheer, and announce (with disproportionate gusto if you ask me): “I am eating BANANAS toniiiiiiiight.”

I have tried every type of banana. I have learned all of their indigenous names. I cannot muster that kind of enthusiasm. The magic eludes me.

C is for chimponde, the word for “peanut butter,” which is dangerously close to chiponde, the word for “dead person.” I learned this the hard way.

D is for devaluation, which is currently happening to the Malawian kwacha at an alarming rate. Prices are rising everywhere, fellow teachers are complaining about their low pay, and people are forming long lines outside ADMARC centers in an attempt to get fertilizer before it runs out (…and I’ve seen them lining up at 8:00pm just to get a good place in line. It’s a grim, foreboding sign in a country where people’s survival depends on their garden, and where the economy is already downright fragile. I fear for the coming months).

E is for eggs. So I imagine, at least. The grand total my hen has produced so far: 0.

F is for “foolish,” a word that recently caused quite a stir when one of the Form 2 students anonymously wrote the phrase “foolish teacher” on a desk. The staff decided to get to the bottom of the mystery through – I kid you not – handwriting analysis.

G is for gestures, my favorite of which is a sort of half-high-five, half-handshake, half-hand-slap that is shared when someone says something funny (which actually leaves you with one-and-a-half greetings, if you were counting, and which is quite fitting because I never know when it is supposed to end).

H is for “hippopotamus in the water,” a phrase one of my favorite teachers likes to use a lot, and which I think pretty well sums up the absurd environment at my school. One day the other teachers speculated about its possible meanings: some guessed it to be about the unwieldiness of an enormous blubbery animal, while others assumed it referred to the grace of a creature doing exactly what it was born to do. Both were wrong.

            Mr. Muyira: “Oh, it means nothing.”

            Mrs. Mbowe: “What do you mean? It has no meaning? Why do you say it?”

            Mr. Muyira: “…because I love words and I love hippos.”

            And then he proceeded to repeat the phrase “a hippo in ze vata, a hippo in ze vata” in an increasingly exaggerated accent, building to the grand finale: “Look everyone, I am French!”

            I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

I is for ice cream, which I recently realized I probably technically could keep at my house if I really wanted to/really saved up for a refrigerator. Informal poll: should I save up $100 or so to buy a mini-fridge as a one-year anniversary present to myself? (A lot of people in my village already have one, and it would be a game-changer in my village life, but I don’t want to spoil myself.)

J is for Jane, which a surprising number of people in my village still insist is my name.

K is for “Kid or Kid?,” the favorite game of many a Peace Corps volunteer. When you hear an ear-splitting wail on a minibus, at church, at school, at a bar, or in your bed at 9:00pm, you ask yourself and anyone around you the question: “Is that a (goat) kid or a (human) kid?” The answer often surprises you.

L is for laughter, and there’s a lot of it in my life – coming from me and created by me, sometimes intentionally, usually not.

M is for mami, a term of utterly platonic endearment that I’m pretty endeared by myself. Usually people call me “Madam,” a term of respect that I appreciate but feel kind of distant about, but I get the occasional “Yes, mami!” and “Hello, mama!” And I love it every time.

M is also for mononucleosis, which might be the funniest disease you can get while living alone in an African village. And boy did I get it.

N is for nsima, the staple food of Malawi. I ate it everyday for the first three months and have gone to drastic measures to avoid it ever since then. As I stretch toward the one-year mark, I’ve been building stronger barricades around my culturally sacred idols, the things I want to keep holy for the sake of my own sanity: namely, the right to privacy and the right to eat whatever I want. And I never want to eat nsima ever again.

O is for (o)rranged marriage (whatever – just pretend). Apparently my headmaster (who is sort of a boisterous, larger-than-life character) has been approaching male volunteers in my group and offering them his sisters’ hands in marriage. I can’t leave George alone for a moment.

P is for puppy, who is basically all I talk about these days and who is getting harder and harder to raise as he explodes into full-fledged 7-month-old adolescence in a place where crate training is laughably nonexistent. People here either a) let their dogs run loose and allow them to live as scavengers, or b) keep them chained up their entire lives. I refuse to do either of those things. (So far the moral high ground has cost me the following: most of the pages of my Peace Corps cookbook, an especially precious pair of wool socks, a favorite necklace, a radio, and several rolls of toilet paper. This was possibly the most upsetting loss. That stuff is important.)

I took Chalo to the city to see the veterinarian about two months ago, and I learned several things:

-       Young white women in Africa have no trouble getting rides. Young white women with dogs in Africa DO have trouble getting rides.

-       It is easier to sell this through a kind of entrapment: hide the dog behind you, and do not reveal him until the car has already come to a full stop and you have smiled at the driver and greeted him in the vernacular. Better yet: get a body part in the car so they can’t leave without you.

-       When the driver starts to pull away in fear and you are pleading, “No, he loves everyone! He will sleep on my lap the whole time,” make sure the dog in question did not just sit down on a swarm of army ants, because if he does his eyes will start rolling wildly at an unseen demon. He will spin, snarl, snap at the air, and twist around in a rodeo-like way while you shout, “He doesn’t bite! He is calm and gentle! Really!”

-       Make sure all the army ants are off of him before you climb in the car, or the dog in question will continue to writhe, moan, and flash his teeth for the next half-hour. The mother sitting next to you will cower and hide her baby.

Q is for questions, which my students are getting more and more comfortable asking me. Within five minutes of my return to school after a week-long absence, I had this gem of a conversation with a Form 4 student:

            Boy: “Hello, Madam, good morning. I have some questions for you.”

            Me: “Sure! Go ahead.”

            Boy: “Firstly, how was your trip? Secondly, why is ‘practice’ sometimes spelled ‘practice’ and sometimes spelled ‘practise’? Lastly, what is sodomy?”

R is for religious conversations, which I seem to be getting drawn into more and more lately, especially on public transport. There was the man on the bus who asked me if I was born-again and did not find my answer of “No, once was enough” very funny. There was the man who first asked for my hand in marriage, then my phone number, then tried to get me to join his church – and when all of these failed, he tried to get me to give him private prayer lessons. (What does that even mean?) Then there was the day when the staff room practically burst into flames over whether women are biblically permitted to wear trousers. And of course there is the general omnipresence of religious talk, especially in a country where Bible Knowledge is a required course, gospel music is played at school, and official gatherings of all kinds always start with a prayer. And then there is me: someone with a lot of deep-seated, highly concentrated, but ultimately very generalized and very private spiritual feeling. Because religious matters are treated very openly but very literally here, I struggle to answer all the questions. I often wish there was a more succinct way to explain, “I was raised Methodist, kind of, I guess, and there are elements of it that move me deeply, but mostly all I know is that I can’t think about the Law of Conservation of Energy without getting goosebumps.” If anybody knows a word for that, let me know.

S is for strikes, which were recently held by civil servants nationwide (teachers included) to demand a raise in salaries that will compensate for the devaluation of the kwacha. I cannot comment upon it, but I can say that the extra sleep I got was exquisite.

T is for kuTengwa, the feminine version of the Chitumbuka word for getting married. (A pretty revealing little linguistic window on the gender dynamics of this culture: kutengwa is only used with women, and it means “to be taken”; kutola is only used with men, and it means “to take.”) And everyone wants to know if I am. Taken, that is. My go-to answer in 2012 was, “No! I’m too young!” But now that I’m 24 that feels a little false even to me, so I’ve started giving lengthier explanations about education, opportunity, adventure, and the fact that the biggest decision of my life isn’t one I intend to make quickly, or even in this decade, necessarily. This can be a difficult thing to explain in a culture where most women my age are mothers – or at a school where, if a girl stops coming to school, the reason is usually that she has gotten married.

U is for uranium, a major export and a very big deal. When trucks full of uranium come barreling through my village, it is quite the picture: everything stops. Women in colorful chitenje slow and turn with teetering buckets of water on their heads, men on their way to the factory pause in the road, and children stop mid-game to watch the long row of semi-trucks zoom by, each vehicle practically screaming “DOLLARS” while flanked by screeching police escorts. Life doesn’t resume until the swirl of red dust comes – the only thing left in its wake.

V is for vula, the word for rain, which practically constitutes a weather emergency around here. Life halts – people come late or don’t come at all, choosing instead to hole up in their houses and sleep. I like this custom.

W is for “WOW,” my favorite (verbal) student response when I brought pictures of my sisters to school. They were unanimously declared staggeringly beautiful. Several kids asked to keep the pictures, and I caught a few boys drawing their likeness on their notebooks. (My favorite non-verbal response was from a little Form 1 boy. I caught him smirking and raising his eyebrows pretty lasciviously at a picture of Maddie.)

W is also for wine, which Chalo spilled and consumed entire bucket of. And that’s how I saw a drunk dog for the first time.

X is for excellent, which is how I feel about the news that my deputy headmaster stays up late at night writing essays for one of those U.S.-based cheating websites. The irony of the whole thing is sort of infuriating but gorgeous to me: a lazy college student orders a 10-page paper on the Ottoman Empire, and a Malawian man who speaks English as his third language researches the topic using 50-year-old textbooks in a dilapidated storage room in a rural African village and gets paid $100 to do it. More power to him.

Y is for yembe, the word for mango. I’m already counting down the months until next mango season.

Z is for za kuno, the phrase for “come here,” because I’m running out of steam and I don’t know any other “z” words. 

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Malawian

            I’ve decided there’s a reason why movies about idealistic young teachers in rough, undersupplied schools often hinge on the redemptive power of language. It’s because the cliché is true: the written word breaks down walls.

            I introduced a weekly journal ritual this term to address a few issues: to build up my students’ writing stamina, to push them to use the language more, to encourage creativity over regurgitation, to give me a better way of measuring progress, and really just to get to know them better (something I desperately wanted from the beginning).

            They’ve surpassed my expectations in wonderful ways. Kids who used to approach assignments with lackadaisical disinterest can now be found bowed over their desks, writing past the bell, and smiling shyly when they hand in their work. There are kids who use their journal as a chance to keep an ongoing dialogue with me, kids who spill secrets and share dreams, and kids who sign off every week with “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write about this” or “Thank you for listening, Madam.”

The first prompt I ever gave them was this: “Tell me about a memory from your childhood.” Their recollections were so distinctively African, so unintentionally humorous, and yet so touchingly universal – the smell of mangoes, the trauma of early loss, the freedom of playing in mud puddles, and the joy of hanging out with your dad. They made me laugh, they made me cry, and they paint a picture of life in this country better than I ever could.

I cannot resist sharing a few of them. So, behold, a sampling of the mingled sweetness and tragedy of a Malawian childhood.

Games

“When I was a child I liked playing different games, as well as crying and beating my friends. I was good at feeding my grandfather’s goats, cows, and sheeps [sic]. I was also good at running when my mother called me to get a bath.” – Nyuma

“I played football so I enjoy on that because I am a player man. Am have power energy.” – Jordan

“Firstly is that when I was young I was not respecting my parents because my mind was not yet ready to think about respect. Secondly is the type of playings. I and my friends we were playing in places where as I’m talking I can’t play in that places. These places are: in the stagnant water, in the rain, in the mud, etc.” –Jacob

“I played with toys like cow, farm cart, axe, hoe, and bridge.” – Benson

[I love this. An axe as a toy – how Malawian.]

“We were taking wires and making cars for playing with, as like the real car like Toyota.” – Jacob

“When I am watching things like basketball I fill happy and not only that but comfortable.” – Maxwell

“I was like playing bao game, draft, playing football very much. I also liked to go to the forest to pick natural fruits. I was also like swimming at Kasito dam.” – Benard

“When the rain were raining me and me friend we were dancing by the rain and we were very happy.” – Jacob

Food

“…also I was unforgiveness or glutton glumandaiser [???]. If someone have got snatched my food I was crying.” – Wellings

“It was very easy to get food without any problem.” – Jacob

“My favorite childhood memory I remember that when my mother come back to work every day she was take chips or a biscuit. So now she didn’t take chips or biscuit and everyday when I come back from school my sister first hugs me and she asks me Thoko today you are learning about what?” - Thoko

“In 1999 when I was young my mother was telling that I love so much eating bananas and up to now still I am loving bananas.” – Junior

Violence and Punishment

“I don’t want to slap my friend because am very happy when I have with many friends.” – Lontia

 “At first day at secondary school near Mzuzu, the headmaster told me to sweep in the staff room and around the classes. Because I was too late and he struck me. I was surprised.” – Peter C

“When I was starting my school in Standard 1, I was bothered so much with unkindful guys who were in high classes. They seized my notebooks, pencil, and other school material. They ran away from the school campus. I was started crying and when the teacher came it was when they have already gone, so I told the teacher about it. Later she asked me to show those guys. So I was helpless because I was not recognized them.

So this is one thing I remember in my life.” – Richard

“When I was childhood I like to beat my friend. Also I like to crying and I liked my mother to live together each and every time. […] If my father say I don’t have a money I start crying. I crying crying and my father give 20 kwacha and buying some sweets and biscuits then I stop crying. My mother was slap me because I was say my daughter if you grow up you have to be a thief because you love money so much. This is all.” – Maurice

“When I was a child I liked to cry and sleeping for many hours. The one day when I crying my mother she slap me with a stick and tell me don’t cry again. And that day may don’t eat anything with a whole day.

Another day when I sleep under a tree the snake was fallen down from tree and my brother came to pull me, so that snake was ascending in that tree again. From that days when these two kind of bad behavior I was change because I knows that this is a childish behavior.” – Milliam

Memories

“There was a lot of things which I was following when I was young. I cannot forget some of it. And also I already forgot some of it. I remember that when it is Sunday day I always going to church to pray. And during the school day I didn’t want to go to school without any food in my bag. Also I didn’t want to miss any period in the classroom. If a period has gone to tell us that it is time to go to our home, I was not going home directly but I was going to the bush with my friend to pick some masuku [a small sour reddish fruit that grows wild here. It defies description and I have no idea what it is in English]. And I’m arriving late in the home. My mother always she is chatting to me day and day.” – Maggie

“My parents were living in village therefore my life is of village. My parents brought me up in the spiritual life and this made me to grow honest and kind. Firstly, the most interesting thing is that when I was 3 years old my parents commanded me that there is God, the creator of the universe. When I was 5 years old I had several question in my heart about God. If God created everything include a man, now who created God?” – Samson

“I like my mother because I was living with my mother for a long time. My father was die in 1998. I am growing up with my mother start reading with my mother this is a reason I like my mother.” – Isobel

“I was young in 1997. My father buy me something like shoes, caps, fishnet, not books. And those day my father encouraged me to school and gave structure when complained school. A money is not problem because next you can be educated man it’s easy to find jobs.” –Dan

“In 2006 when I was in Blantyre I saw a person who his name was Bololo. He was a very good grand. He was loving babies.” – Junior

“I remember that my mother was liked to buy a pair of shoes for me because I disliked to walk barefooted. When the time come I was six years old my mother sent me to start reading. I was working hard although I was young I remember in standard one, term one, I was pass number two. My mother gives me a drink and biscuit. I was happy and my mother was happy too.” - Isobel

[The 2002 famine was a common motif in the journal entries, made especially striking on a personal level because I remember that year so clearly in my own childhood. This student, who wrote about it with unusual introspection and maturity, impresses me on a regular basis.)

“If I can remember in my childhood, I was enjoying without knowing that there are problems. It was in 2002 when there was starvation. My parents and sisters could complain about hunger but to me it was nothing. […] Indeed childhood is very interesting because one can enjoy even if one can face difficulties. But to child does not take matter.” – Samson

Southern African Living Magazine

I have shelves now, and I don’t live out of a suitcase anymore! …six months after moving in.

If Southern African Living were a real publication, it would probably have recipes for ant-and-avocado salads and articles about decorating your pit latrine (1^st step: remove spiders, 2^nd step: add potpourri). And my house might be in it. So wallow in visions of my domestic bliss and feast your eyes on all this TALULAR chic.* Mostly this is an excuse to show you pictures of my dog.

*TALULAR = Teaching and Learning Using Locally Available Resources. It’s not just a catchy acronym or a means of making do in an African classroom; it’s a way of life.

Sometimes there are idyllic sun-soaked afternoons.

And sometimes there are Old Testament-style disasters. These are flying ants (harmless, delicious, but annoying and messy for the way they crawl under doors, fling themselves at lights, and then proceed to die all over your floor).

changing lives with David Attenborough

Best moments from the first meeting of Wildlife Club, which featured the experience of watching BBC’s Planet Earth with a roomful of Malawian teenagers, many of whom had never seen a nature documentary before:

- a collective cringe of “Eeeeeeeeeeee” in response to shots of windswept, snow-laden Arctic landscapes

- a collective “Ahhh, pepa, pepa” (sorry, sorry!) in response to my explanation that my homeland usually has at least three to four months of winter, followed by amazement that humans can even survive in places where it snows.

- explaining the lifestyle of the Inuit to kids who think 50-degree weather is worthy of fur-trimmed coats.

- explaining that the taiga is not the same as a tiger.

- David Attenborough states that all living things depend on the sun for their energy. A hearty round of “Yes! Yes yes! The man is right!” hums through the room.

- utter astonishment at the news that many Northern Hemisphere birds travel south when winter comes.

- another collective “Ahhh, pepa pepa,” this time at a male bird of paradise’s failed attempts to woo a pretty lady. (One Form 4 boy knew he was doomed before anyone else: “I can already see that he is not really impressing her.”)

- At the sight of a pack of short-haired, black-faced African wild dogs, the entire room shouts, “Chalo!” My dog hears his name and comes crashing out of the forest, peels across the school grounds, tears into the classroom, and collapses happily in the crowd.

- As that same pack of African wild dogs chases down an impala, the room takes on the the feel of a football game, full of shouts (in Chitumbuka) of “RUN! FASTER!” and “INTO THE WATER.” The impala leaps into a lake, leaving the dogs waiting at the shore. A roar of applause.

- A troop of baboons wades through the Okavango Delta. “Hey, those are our relatives!”

- A whole smorgasbord of moments of communal awe, shared with people seeing many of these things for the first time, which served as a good reminder of several things I already know but need to get booster shots for every now and then: the waxing and waning of the seasons IS incredible, animals ARE awesome, and the world we live in IS staggering.

And I walked home that day with that Antoine de Saint Exupéry quote playing on repeat in my brain: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Portraits

With the much-feared national exams looming just a few months away, the students in Forms 2 and 4 were in need of official IDs, and I was asked to take the photos. Over the space of several weeks, with a red cloth draped over a spare blackboard in the shadow of a mango tree, I took a portrait of every kid in Day School (the 7:15am-1:35pm regular sessions, which I teach) and every non-traditional student in Open School (the abbreviated afternoon sessions, which are dominated by middle-aged learners). And the results were kind of beautiful. Credit it to the magic of rainy-season-filtered natural light, or to the fact that I know these students well and see them everyday, but there was something pretty moving about putting a camera in front of people who don't get the chance to be photographed very often and watching them transform. Clowns suddenly affected a glassy-faced calm, smiles bloomed across shy girls' faces, and some hammed it up in a way that only Malawians seem to understand (with a forced far-off gaze and a pained expression).

Chalo also had an ID photo taken to add fuel to the village-wide running joke that he's enrolling next term, which is being taken more and more seriously with every new word he learns, and which is a joke that will never ever ever get old.

The Seven-Month Itch

I recently celebrated my seven-month Malawiversary by spending the day sick in bed, which gave ample time to think about everything that feels so far away, but also to take stock of all the gifts that have been ushered in.

 [Inspired by the lovely Rita, whose blog can be found here: http://malawhee.tumblr.com/.  If you don’t know her that’s really a shame because she gives great hugs and her favorite song is “Ignition (Remix).”]

I ache for:

-       The easy, unapologetic intimacy that only comes with people you’ve known and loved for years.

-       Libraries. Bookstores.

-       Transport that does not feel like one of Dante’s nine layers of hell.

-       Knowing what is going on, exactly when it is going to happen, and being able to count on that.

-       Foods that are the subject of many lusty daydreams, including but not limited to: whole wheat bread, dark green spinach-based salads drizzled in balsamic vinaigrette and sprinkled with sunflower seeds and feta cheese, pineapple pizza, salmon, tofu stir fries, chocolate chip cookies, macaroni and cheese, asparagus, brownies, baked potato soup with cheddar and chives, grilled cheese, honey mustard, poppyseed muffins, burritos, yogurt, General Tso’s chicken, chocolate milkshakes.

-       Fast-paced banter. Wordplay that needs no translation.

-       Resources. Everything classrooms have that I always took for granted: posters, markers, crayons, books, paper, electricity, running water.

-       Anonymity.

-       Feeling truly head-to-toe clean.

-      The United States as an idea – what we’re about, where we’ve been, and what we can be.

I really appreciate what I’ve gained, though:

- a community.

- a belief that humans were meant to live in villages like this.

- a general laissez-faire joyousness.

- a work environment where people come in laughing and leave laughing.

- a fruit lover’s paradise, with pineapples, mangoes, papaya, and avocado galore depending on the season.

- a renewed conviction in the transformative power of education.

- a feeling of adventure that permeates even the mundane (e.g. riding the bus! ordering furniture! buying tomatoes! look at me, look at how integrated I am!).

- the ability to walk everywhere I need to go on a daily basis.

- 100 funny, sweet, generally hard-working students who are openly appreciative and (usually) a joy to be around

- prowess in a minority language that is spoken by few outsiders.

- a taste of what it feels like to be a local celebrity.

- the feeling that I have become someone that 10-year-old me would have wanted to meet: an independent woman doing interesting things while surrounded by animals in a small African country.

- an untouchable inner strength, getting steelier with every passing day.