Give Me Freedom, Give Me Fire

It has come to my attention that it is now March, the greatest of the twelve months. The daffodils are all abloom, and the sun, when it peaks out from behind these chubby clouds, is warm; it's spring.

Most mornings, I take my coffee on a bench just down the lane that overlooks the south harbo(u)r of the island. The sea is surprisngly still and stunningly teal and, as you've surely heard, the grass is impossibly green; I'm in Ireland.

And it was from this mossy bench this morning that I finally began to write the story of my Long Way Home. I've been writing more and more lately. Here and there throughout my fastforwarded days I've paused to make chicken scratched notes. To some degree, the streak of inspriation can be attributed to necessity; I can't even recall my last routine day. For the past two months, I've woken each morning with the jolt that comes from having no recollection of where I am, but also, with a calm acceptance of having equally no idea what will happen today. I can thank Niger for my ability to accept this sort of waking, but this lifestyle does not make a simple tale to tell. To be honest, I've been putting it off. My journaling has been exclusively focused on the here and now. Much better to describe the day's struggles and victories, to remain dedicated to detail. Should I allow myself the liberty to zoom out, to swim among the What It Means, I'd almost surely drown.

I can offer little more, therefore, than the abridged version of this story and continue to beg for your patience as I grapple with this newest version of my life. Take note as well that if the abridged version is this long and wordy, the full-length copy will certainly take years to reveal itself. Actually, many of my stories seem to lie just outside comfortable reaching distance. I can't access them without a bit of a bump from an outside force, and then they fall out of my shelves without my approval. In fact, I've discovered in the past two weeks that it takes approximately three pints before I lose the ability to hold back all my Africa ramblings. (You have been warned.)

It was past midnight last night and I was just sipping through the foam of my third Guiness at Cotter's, the only pub (of two) on the island that is open during the off-season, in front of the coal fireplace with two of my new friends. As is demanded by a pub, we sat shooting the shit, mostly about summers past on the Cape, although the subject quickly came around to times more recent. It had been Marianne's first winter on the island (and her first snow!).

"The fecking quietest New Years I've ever seen," she said, leaning in. Across the table, Pat nodded into his touch-screen phone.

Bump.

It was a trigger I hadn't expected, but the image immediately sent my mind reeling back to Niger, to Abdou's family, to my JICA and to recycled liquor bottles filled with peanuts. These swirlling bouts of miserable confusion stem from the juxtaposition of my current life and that which I've left behind in Niger. When I was there, for example, it seemed completely absurd to think of everything available to a person living in the wealthier world; pineapple in the wintertime does not make any sense. Snacks wrapped individually based on their calorie content do not make any sense. And, for heaven's sake, why did Ben think it was necessary to make rice easier? But just two months later, I was standing in front of the glowing shelves of the cold aisle in SPAR, frustratedly attempting to choose between varieties of sliced cheese. I paid, jammed headphones in, pushed play and stepped into the rain, and it nearly slipped my notice that just weeks ago the sight of cheese, of any type, would have had me thanking Allah.

"How have I gotten here?" I often wonder, as I impatiently click internet links fifteen times or grumble at my co-worker, who has interrupted my painting only to state that kneeling in the grass, as I was already doing, would make my jeans wet, which they already were. "How have I gotten here?"

The literal answer takes us back to just after the quietest fecking New Years I've ever seen. The second week of January we were in Hamdallaye for In-Service Training, happily back among our stage-mates swapping stories of life in our villages and staying up entirely too late. Then one late morning Tondi came to the front of the Refectoire, where we sat waiting for him, with a look on his face I won't soon forget. "You need to have strength," he began, and he read a letter aloud from Washington. We were being evacuated.

It's important to note at this point that I stayed steadily shell-shocked until about midway through my dentist appointment the following week. IST was immediately cancelled, and I returned to my village that evening to say my goodbyes. I gave away most of my things (including Charlie and the Waitress), threw some of what was left into two sacks and was back to the capital less than 24 hours later. We closed our bank accounts that afternoon one-by-excruciating-one, repacked endlessly that night without any idea where we were going or for how long, and were flown out the following morning at some stupid o'clock.

All of the sudden, we were all in Morocco, stubbling filthy and exhausted down plane stairs into a strange green land with air so moist you could taste it. We were shuffled around the next few days as Peace Corps staff trickled in to facilitate the mess, hot hotel showers and Western clothes at the market gradually transforming us into people the other's couldn't immediately recognize. There were all these new people around, too, members of the newest stage that I hadn't yet had a chance to meet. And we were in another world, a city with ATM machines, traffic lights, oranges and black soil. It was jarring, all this different everywhere, and few seemed to be handling it gracefully.

We were sent to counselors. "Have your sleeping or eating habits changed?" Excuse me?!

All that occurred in Rabat now seems a dream. I'd come to an acceptable life decision only for it to be swept up and carried away a moment later, over and over and over again day after day. Near the end of the week we were finally presented with our formal options: slim. Now choose your poison, they said, by tomorrow.

I can recall very little of that snazzy hotel in Rabat other than the unsettling quantity of mirrors everywhere and the sixth floor roof deck.

I'd escaped one evening to said roof where, as it were, I was spitting loogies at the terrifying, gargantuan cats that infest every corner of Morocco, which were down on the street level like round, furry targets, when a couple of the new kids caught me at it. The curious thing about Peace Corps is not that you get to know your fellow volunteers quickly and deeply; sharing such an experience will ultimately do this. The curious thing is that outside of our minute, specific environment, we don't know one another. Faced with tragedy of such scale, we reacted differently and coped at different rates. Or, in my case, didn't cope at all. (:::hack:::splat:::) They told us not to consider applying for a transfer position if we were "stressed." Excuse me?!

Throughout the week I was joined up on that roof by a changing cast, and some of them seemed equally unready to make choices so huge. "What are you doing?" we'd ask one another, perhaps in the hope that someone might actually have a fecking clue. (:::hack:::splat:::) We'd nod as the other answered, and we'd ask the appropriate follow-up questions. Mostly, however, I was just hoping the question wouldn't be turned back at me. But it always was, and eventually, somehow, my answer morphed into an ambiguous "travelling," and some others' did as well.

"Where are you going?"

"Um...Amsterdam." The tickets were cheap, I'd reasoned.

"Hm...I could go to Amsterdam."

And so our five-man group was born, on the roof of a Rabat hotel, mostly out of a shared destination city, and, if you'll forgive my assumption, a decision not to decide quite yet what was next. (:::hack:::splat:::)

I showed up to my appointments, filled out my paperwork, signed on the dotted line. Then one long, weird day, Peace Corps Niger was finished. In what felt like a heartbeat, I'd gone from making plans for my life in Niger to decidedly not doing so for my life after. I had gone from tearfully fighting myself everyday to learn Zarma to fighting myself not to forget it in a world that's never heard of the language. I'd gone from celebrating swearing in to adding that ugly "R" (returned) to the front of my PCV Niger (Peace Corps Volunteer) signature.

And I hated it.

But it stood to my reason at the time that I couldn't quite be a returned PCV if I hadn't returned yet.

And so the next day, the five of us (and a couple of others) took an early train out of Rabat.

Stay tuned for chapter two of my Long Way Home: European Crash-tour.