anniversary

Two years ago on August 15, 2010 I arrived in Kenya with Annie Garau for the four most extraordinary, challenging, life-changing months of my life so far.  One year ago on August 15, 2011 I had a panic attack in my mentor’s office about this one-year anniversary of the arrival into what my life has and will become.  This year on August 15, 2012 I was calm, I breathed steadily, I was contemplative.

I have been home from Kenya for two weeks now, and the ache of missing that place and those people has once again set in, as if feeling its absence is forever a part of my soul when on American soil. But it’s a different feeling than I experienced upon my return in 2010. This time, I recognize that it is not just my Kenyan family and friends, the scent and soil, the colors and community that I miss; I recognize that I also miss myself.

On August 15, 2010, as I once again breathed in Kenyan air at the Nairobi airport, and for the ensuing four months in Kenya, I felt brave, I felt strong, I felt alive.  On August 15, 2011, I began hyperventilating because I worried that that person, that life, would never return and because I didn’t know how to be that person in the United States.

In Kenya I am present 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In Kenya I am engaged, I am passionate, I am secure, not just in the big moments or in the successes, but in every moment.  In the horribly sad, soul-wrenching, confusing and muddled moments, I am present.  In the frustrating, slow, challenging moments, I am present.  In the absurd, confidence-killing, monotonous moments, I am present.

It’s not that I am great, or superior, or have mastered “how to be in Kenya”.  It’s not that I have anything at all figured out, it’s just that I AM.

So when I returned to the United States in December 2010, freezing and lost, overwhelmed and unsure, I suddenly found myself not only wrestling with the deaths of friends, with missing red soil, with reintegrating into high school, but also wrestling with an identity shift.  I spent the next 8 months, until August 15, 2011, attempting to figure out what happened to the alive and present “Kenyan Callie” while going through daily life as an American.

I admit that I still worry about the loss of my Kenyan identity, I still fret over attempting to reconcile my two lives into one.  But on this August 15, 2012, rather than cry and shake in people’s offices, I realized that I have a daily choice: to be or not to be the “Kenyan Callie”.  In the time leading up to the August 15, 2011 “meltdown”, I was so paralyzed by the ‘transition’ that I never considered that I shouldn’t have been attempting to transition my identity, my personality, my spirit.

It’s true that my life’s passion, my heart, my deepest joy isn’t here, it’s there.  It’s true that some days this makes it more challenging to be the “Kenyan Callie”, who laughs and sings and dances and walks and listens and asks questions and loves as deeply as I do there, here.

But that doesn’t mean that I should sit around waiting for the opportunity to be present in Kenya, for the opportunity to be the “Kenyan Callie” again and waste my life in the United States by being disengaged, disinterested, dispassionate until the next plane leaves for Nairobi.  There are days when I miss Kenya , my life there, my soul there, so much that it is paralyzing; on this August 15, 2012, I discovered that rather than let that bottomless ‘missing’ disable and disarm me, I should use that force to be the “Kenyan  Callie” in my daily life.

So while this August 15 wasn’t spent taking in deep gulps of Kenyan air, it also wasn’t spent gasping for breath as I freaked out in monumental proportions.  It’s been a happy anniversary, as I’ve discovered a new drive to be better. To be my Kenyan self.  To take that harsh feeling of absence and to turn it into passion and presence.  To be the same self who I was on August 15, 2010, and on every day I have spent in Kenya, on each day I spend alive.

To BE someone who I love and who I am proud of so that on August 15, 2013 and on every ensuing anniversary, rather than mourn over the person and place missing, I can celebrate who Kenya and life has shaped and is shaping me to become.