I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.
French Guiana feels like another world. As I said my prayers this morning, I struggled thinking about my adventures this past year. It is a very strange feeling, knowing that three weeks into Medical School is where I need to be, but with a heart yearning to return to my second home. The memories of bouncing along the road with eleven children stuffed in the twingo, or hanging out with some youth at their homes, or dancing around to Bahá’í music in the national center… God, I miss it so much.
It hurts to think of the youth, but I can’t stop– nor do I want to. This is when I know just how much this last year changed me. It is something I want to share with someone, but the feelings are so deeply personal, that I feel this blog, incidentally, is my only outlet.
Last night at the Bahá’í center, the International Fundraising Dinner comprised of samples of African cuisine. During the program, a short film was shown regarding some aspect of African Culture and it took me right back to French Guiana. I miss the children. I miss their constantly breastfeeding/pregnant mothers. I miss the energy of the youth.
My feelings became so strong this morning that I decided to call up Antonio, one of my favorite youth because of his dedication and leadership. He was so surprised by my call; neither one of us could really have a legitimate conversation…Yet simply hearing his voice, with the sounds of French Guiana in the background was enough to transport me back again.
I am torn, my heart is torn, but it makes me stronger? What I experienced this past year cannot, and will never be put adequately into words, spoken, written or even sung. I struggle to respond to those who ask how it was. How DO you explain taking that creek bath? How CAN I speak of the joy and pains of tutoring a study circle with ten youth? What words to I use to describe the sacrifices my hosts, the Walkers, have made to benefit the community? I can’t bear to make a 2 minute standard summary of my experience; I won’t LET myself do that.
The thing is, I don’t even know what changed? I cannot point to a single experience around which the rest of my year pivoted (ok, maybe pushing the twingo in the dark rain along the deserted national highway… ) But I don’t know how to explain to others my feelings. I want to, and I can’t. It is a language of my soul that I cannot articulate.
A glance at a photo, listening the youth’s favorite song, wearing a pangi, or even a very hot day transports me right right back to it all. And I’ve never felt this before. I can’t go back and experience it all over again; but it is my most sincere hope that the others that follow will learn from this writing, that they will not resist the change that will occur in them, that they truly STOP to reflect at certain moments when they are there. I did it, during that creek bath, and God, that’s what sustains me.
Service changes you, it really does. You look at the world differently. You love others differently. You cannot pick up and continue where you left off a year prior, you just can’t. I think I fool myself sometimes when I feel like I haven’t skipped a beat since last fall. But in reality, the rhythm of my life was so different in South America; it has changed so much, and that mark remains on me– nothing, no one can ever get it off.
I knew it.
