I'm home from Lesotho. To my disappointment, a year in Africa did nothing for my dancing ability. I remember that private fantasy a year ago, so incapable of imagining what I might gain - that vision of my post-Africa self busting a hot tribal move on some wedding dance floor, people whispering explanations, "She's been in Africa for a year." Africa, the place where babies come dancing right out of their mothers' tummies. That's what I thought.
In Lesotho, of course, babies really do dance. Babies, nuns, old men, school kids, mothers. Had I known anything about Basotho dancing I only would have hoped harder that I might drink from that cup, become a little bit Basotho, dance like an African. A year later and I still dance like Richard Simmons - that is, too much butt swinging and too little dignity.
Funny to remember those things I hoped for a year ago. I wondered how I would change - I hoped Africa would transform me. I imagined coming home more articulate, compassionate, poised; smarter, glowingly healthy. Worldly in the best sense. I hoped Lesotho might clarify the rightful direction my life should take. Improve my sense of style. Make me an inspiring teacher.
Perhaps these old daydreams haunting me now are the worst of the "culture shock." Having traveled alone all over South and West Africa, I come home to wait for siblings and parents to give me a ride to the mall: so much for independence. Eloquence flies out the window every time someone asks about my year - I scramble for a vivid or interesting story, sometimes wishing no one would ask me about Africa at all. Answering the phone unnerves me, and I wonder when I'll stop feeling so awkward. Wasn't I supposed to come home fabulous and new?
I remember anticipating what teaching would be like. No one warned me I would love my students as though they were my first children, and how watching them leave would ache. I should have remembered my own teachers, good people, standing smiling in the classroom on the last day of school. We didn't bid our teachers teary goodbyes, we didn't thank them for their hours of grading or their careful lesson plans or their love. We didn't know about that stuff. We only ran screaming away from school into three months of freedom.
Teaching proved my highest expectations. It called forth my optimism, patience, humor and creativity just like I imagined it would. Those little teaching successes really do taste sweeter than any other joy. Trying to teach humbled me and grew me up. It was incredibly, relentlessly hard. Great teachers I've known remain my heroes.
For all the doubts and discomforts of coming home, every now and then I feel a new grace, something unearthed rather than borrowed, and I know I'll harvest the goodness of this year little by little for a long time. No matter what happens next.
