Finding Home

It has been a full two years to the day since I left snowy New England for my new desert life. Maybe you didn't even notice those two years going by. Maybe you know you changed immensely during those two years, like I did. Maybe you're somewhere in between and you think, maybe it was a big two years, but you haven't had a chance to sit down and really measure the difference. Two years. Seven hundred and thirty days.

Two years is a long time.

I have built a life here. I have my favorite sheets at the regional apartment. I know the best spots to get cell reception in my room. I have a very particular way of setting up my bug net every night. I can tell the specific cry of each child in my neighborhood. I can navigate Peace Corps bureaucracy with surprising skill. I know which constellations will be strung up above my bed at different times of the year. I know which types of clouds will make the best sunrises as they come over the mosque in the morning.

I have come to love this country. I love my family here, I love my village, I love the Pulaar people, and I love Senegal. Even in the face of the colossal homesickness I have felt here, the loneliness and other personal challenges, I am happy. I walk down the streets and I smile because I have found the peace, or jamm, that infuses Senegalese culture. I hope I will take it with me wherever I go.

When I wrote this post a month ago- when the words started to write themselves as I reflected back on my service and its impending end- I finished this top section and went on to talk about finding my way in the world and going back to America. In between then and now, a lot has changed. I went to my Close of Service Conference and I realized, I can't leave here. I'm not done here yet. It was a heart-stopping, adrenaline-rushing, feel-it-in-your-soul realization. It was the kind of feeling that can turn your world upside down.

So, I signed up for another year of Peace Corps.

I have been searching for some time for an elusive something. I can tell you that it wasn't in my village. Despite the love I have given and received there, despite the laughs, the hard work, the challenges and triumphs, despite the cumulative effect of everyday beauty I have experienced over two years there, I did not belong in Katote. I built a life in Katote, it is true, and I liked my life, but it was not my home. It was not where I was meant to be forever.

For a long time now I have felt this unsettled feeling in Katote, but I have struggled to make sense of this or put it into words. Does it make sense to be loved and be happy somewhere but to not belong there? How is it possible to still feel like you are missing something when you have so much?

Honestly, I still don't have these answers. The best way I can make sense of it is to liken it to the idea of home. Home, to me, isn't just where you grew up or what is familiar to you. Home is a sensation that overwhelms you. It is a cascade of good feelings that signal to you that your soul has found a resting place. You go through the ups and downs of life at home just as you would anywhere else, but when you are home you have the settled peace that comes with knowing you are somehow in the right place. I feel at home on the top of a mountain or anytime I step onto a track. I felt at home the second I got to Brown. I don't know why, I don't know what it is, but I want to find home again.

I will be living in the capital city of Dakar for the next year and plan to return to the states next June. I don't know if I will find my home in Dakar, but I am excited to try. Maybe I'll be ready to leave in a year, maybe I'll be so happy there I'll stay, maybe I'll come back to America, maybe I just sent myself on a globe-trotting trajectory that will last the rest of my life. Two years ago I left the snow and everything I knew and loved and I couldn't be happier.