How Does One Make This Easier?

How does one make reverse culture shock easier? How do you re-enter your home country without too much of a jolt to your system?

When will it be normal again to go into a grocery store packed with large, full shelves? When will it not be a laborious task to pick something in the store out, simply because you have choices again, and you no longer know how to pick out things in a store? Right now, it seems like every store I have gone in, I have needed or wanted something, but ended up not picking it out. I look and look, and don’t make a decision. Side note… I did buy a bookcase the other day, but that was easy, there was only one color left in stock of the size I wanted! I have no idea what to do with all this stuff around me. I look at and pick up everything in sight, just kind of marveling at it. I did that with nearly everything in my own house for the first week. It is like I have never seen these things before. But I have.

I keep on imagining of how it would be with these two kids from Mozambique here with me. To see their reaction to a grocery store, Walmart, endless aisles of toys, and even snow, would be really interesting. I keep imagining them walking beside me and holding my hands. Little Carlito would be in shock and comment on things, like he did the day I left Africa and said goodbye to him with my tennis shoes on instead of flip flops. He sees me and I pick him up and the first thing he says is “You bought tennis shoes!” He would be saying about nearly everything “Hey! Look at that!” And Sabina, she would be so timid and not really know what to do or say. They would probably eat everything in the house. And get sick.

Just like I got sick coming back. Ugh. I felt sicker coming back and eating the food here than I ever had in Mozambique. I couldn’t eat dairy stuff really for the first week, and haven’t eaten much meat either, my body can’t handle it.

And what about the kids we left in the villages? How do we make it through a day without thinking of them, thinking of how crappy their lives are and how we can’t do a thing about it? One little girl, no more than 4, was carrying her little brother who was probably nearly 2. She was taking care of him every time we saw her for the two days we were in this village. How do I reconcile that with my experience here? How do I say “oh, its just the way things are there” when I know that it is so not fair for a little four year old to be responsible for another kid? A four year old babysitter? Come on. Really.

How does this get easier? I make it a bit easier on myself by telling myself I am going back in a few months. And in that time, I am processing things, and trying to make it better. I was sewing some things this weekend, and sort of by accident made a little girl’s dress. I felt like God was nudging me to do this. Its for a girl in Africa. And then I made another one. And a little boy outfit. And another one is cut out… I guess that is my way of making my time here easier. I am going back. That I know. But I have also taken the kids from Africa here with me in my heart.

Human

Wash the darkness from their skin
They’re not human yet
So poor like dirt from the earth
To be a little more than a charity case.
Is the earth alive?
All the people, all over the world?
If yes, Julia, they are, then why
Why do we treat such pigs as human
And humans as such less than that?
If we played the same hunger games,
If we always remained the same,
Then we’d all be inhuman.
For what makes us human?
Ability to talk, to walk to reason?
For those who can’t, are they naught?
Are they really inhuman?
The dark, the mute, the deaf, the lame,
The slow, the blind, the old, the weak?
We are more than the words we know how to speak.
We are more than the angels we reason fly above us.
We are more than the gravel we walk
Whether dry or wet beneath.
We are.
We are.
With skin as dark as pavement
We walk.
Into the sun to bleach our hair
We walk.
Burn our faces,
All human.
As we move,
All human.
We can learn these truths.
From little ones we learn these truths.

This is one of my poems I wrote in the fall of 2007, probably in October. Julia sometimes asks things that we can't understand, she words questions odd. But this one "Is the Earth alive?" puzzled me and her dad. So we asked "You mean all the people?" and she goes "yes." So, yes, all the people are alive. As I am faced with the possibility of going to Africa for a few months, my mind goes back to this and to the painting I did, of two girls from the DRC. "Wash the darkness from their skin" goes Jars of Clay's song. That may be the only response some people have to the poverty that is so deep there. But its not about racism or skin color, its about justice and everyone all around the world being equally as human and alive.