Resettling

It’s remarkable to me that less than one month ago, Scott and I were walking around in t-shirts and sandals in Tanzania and that our biggest worries were about public transportation from one part of the country to another. Tanzanian shillings were wadded up in various pants pockets. A meal of chipsi mayai or wali na kuku was undoubtedly in our near future. We slept on sheets that were stamped with the name of whatever cheap guesthouse we were staying at. We carried packs on our backs filled with clothing and items we’d been carrying since May. That was our life.  

We traveled from Gombe National Park in Western Tanzania back to Monduli for one last night at the volunteer staff house we had called home for a year and a half of the past three years to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. In airport land, we stopped in Istanbul before arriving at JFK Airport in New York the evening of December 18.

Ever since, our lives have existed in a cold winter in the great land of America. No more exposed arms or bare calves. No more Tanzanian shillings or meals for under $2. No more stamped sheets.

We traded our backpacks of minimal belongings for seemingly endless piles of clothes and items we forgot we had, that we wonder if we need and, yet, cannot part with. After looking through almost twenty rubber totes of stuff, we could only fill one plastic bag to give to the local thrift store. The majority of our belongings will go with us; some we’re leaving behind for a later episode of stuff inventory.

For the past three weeks, in New York and Wyoming, Scott and I have been spoiled by the generosity of our families and friends with meals and rides and visits.

Stephen and Amber, dear friends from Wrangell we hadn't seen for three years, came to visit Scott and I in Saratoga, Wyoming. We spent hours catching up over food, beer, and a soak in the local hot springs.

We’ve, indeed, been on a long holiday. Dreams of our Tanzanian students, of friends from Bhutan and Wrangell, of family members have made waking both sweeter and confusing.

For me, my holiday comes to an end… now.

I’m sitting among the C gates of the Seattle Airport. Starbucks is in front of me, the eatery Waji’s to my left, and fellow airport travelers are all around – some moving, some sitting still, but all in anticipation for whatever comes next.

In less than an hour, I’ll board a flight to Alaska. In some ways this flight is nothing like the one I took over seven years ago when I was first going to Alaska to write for the Wrangell Sentinel – I’m older now, traveling a lot lighter, and it’s evening time instead of early morning. In other ways, it’s eerily similar – I’m alone (Scott is driving up in a week with his truck full of our belongings), about to start a job I know almost nothing about, and I’m nervous.

But it’s a different kind of nervousness than the one I had as a 25-year-old going to Alaska for the first time. That former version of me had just spent two years living excessivly in Hong Kong and was embarking on another adventure in a completely new part of the world.

The nervousness I have now stems from a hesitancy to resettle into life in the western world. I’m without a mobile phone which I know my new co-workers will find strange. All I’m arriving to Juneau with this evening is a backpack stuffed with a sleeping bag and enough work clothes to last a week. I don’t plan on showering tomorrow morning (I’m trying to mimic my abroad bathing schedule which attempts to conserve water). I’d like to embrace this new life in America as slowly as possible but I know it’ll be difficult. Already, on a meal for just myself, I spent an amount of money that would’ve paid for at least two Tanzanian meals for both Scott and myself. For my past two dinners, I’ve eaten more red meat than I likely did the whole five months in Tanzania.

It seems inevitable that daily life will soon involve overspending, overindulging, not enough walking, unhealthy doses of vanity, and other qualities of life that cannot exist in the developing world. I guess that I can say that I was extremely fortunate to have lived without these for a small piece of time.