The Long Goodbye Season

Seven weeks from today, our family will be leaving Tanzania, which means that we will have to say goodbye to all the people, places and things that have brought great meaning to our lives over the past two years. That's really difficult.  What's even harder is the fact that between now and then, almost every one of our closest friends will be leaving ahead of us...meaning that we won't say "goodbye" just one time. We will need to say it more like twenty times. 

Summer (or actually it is called "long break" for those of us with opposite seasons) is prime time for teacher missionary travel.  Almost every one of the people we love will be traveling home on a short-term basis, and although they will be returning for the next school year, we will not.

This long season of goodbyes made its debut a couple of weeks ago as new friends Brooklyn and Jonathan returned to the U.S. to have a baby.  It continued on this past week as a family very dear to us - the Pickels - left for Canada.  On and on this season will continue through the following weeks, increasing in magnitude once school ends (June 18) until we ourselves head off to the airport on June 30.  In fact, Tim and I have joked to each other that by the time we leave, we may just be waving goodbye to the empty Hill around us (don't worry, Kappers - we are thankful that you'll still be around).

Does this long, drawn-out process make things easier or more difficult?  To me, it feels like the process of removing a Band-Aid.  Although ripping it off in one quick motion is more painful at the time, it's also over much faster.  If that's a correct analogy, I fear that we're in for a lengthy season of pain.



However, can we actually experience the pain of twenty good-byes or will we begin to become callous in this process because it hurts too much otherwise?  It wasn't too hard for me to leave the U.S. because I always believed I'd return to NJ.  Although I know that things have changed and I have changed, we'll be heading back to a structural set-up that is pretty close to what we left two years ago. However, I already know that I'll never return to this particular set-up...ever.  Even if God calls us back to HOPAC, the community is so transient that it will look almost completely different in just a few years from now.  So saying goodbye here is for real.

I worry that I won't be able to walk my kids through their own emotions because I am busy processing my own responses to transition.  I worry that I won't be able to give my full attention to their grief because I am thinking about 1,000 move logistics details in my head while they are pouring out their souls to me.

I already know that we have different grieving styles in our family and I worry that we will not be able to extend grace to each other in these differences.  "Pre-grievers" mourn the loss before they leave; post-grievers don't express sadness until after the transition has happened.  I already know that I'm a pretty strong post-griever and at least one of my children is a pre-griever.  Neither are "right" or "wrong," but they are very, very different.   For an excellent article summarizing this, click  here

I worry that we will be quickly forgotten and also that we will forget quickly.

I worry that I didn't soak up enough of this life while I had it.  There were days - many days - that felt like they were unending (including yesterday) but overall, it has gone so, so fast.

I can still remember with perfect clarity those first few days of confusion and chaos.  I look back and marvel at the clueless woman that stumbled her way into Tanzania, and then I marvel at how God has been present all along.  I know that He'll be present in this long season of goodbyes, also.

Just One of those Days....

Deep down, I knew that a day that included a sick kid, a sick dog and a sick self, (not to mention pouring rain and mud) would make for a challenging set of circumstances.  I wasn't wrong.

We all get those days, regardless of where we live, but I feel like these no good, very bad days come more often and are more demoralizing here than they would be in the bubble of comfort I used to call home.  As a friend and I were discussing just last week, the margin between a great day and a day which is an epic fail is very narrow here.

Even after being here for almost 2 years, I still struggle with cross-cultural living.  I still feel like a fat, ignorant, clueless and insensitive mzungu (foreigner).  One reason for this is that I'm reminded that I'm a foreigner every day by the people around me, sometimes multiple times, just in case I forget.  Some days I'm able to laugh it off.  Other days, like today, I can't.

Today's installment of The Idiot Mzungu:
* When I moved here, I knew that there was such a thing as Tanzanian time.  I knew that people were not digital-watch-punctual and that being on time just doesn't happen.  What I didn't realize was that not only are people frequently late...they are also frequently early.  It's still the same concept:  time is not important in this culture.  But it really messes with me when someone is an hour and a half early for an appointment.  And of course, there's no apology for this - it is what it is.  How in the world can you plan your day when someone could easily be two hours early or late?  My type-A planning self cannot handle this.

* No matter how many Swahili words I know, I'm still not going to know what in the world people are saying.  I know the word for "flour" (unga) and I know the word for "soap" (sabuni) but never in the world would I think that unga ya sabuni is an actual thing until our gardener is standing in front of me, asking for it.  I stand there, frozen like a deer in head lights.  Does he mean flour and soap?  Soap flour?  What is soap flour?  He stands there, pity in his eyes for the ignorant mzungu.  Finally, by process of elimination, I determine that he actually wants soap powder.  This mirrored a painful conversation that I had with the woman who cooks for me several weeks ago.  I knew the words for "oil" and "water" but had no idea that vegetable oil is actually referred to as oil water.

* I'm never, ever going to get the indirectness of this culture.  If you want something, ask for it!  If you are sick and you need money for the doctor, please just tell me.  I'm happy to help.  I'm clueless enough trying to read Western non-verbal communication.  If you're expecting me to understand that when you say some vague words and gestures, you are really asking me for help, it's just not happening.  On the opposite extreme, I'm continually taken aback at how total strangers can be super direct, as in the case recently where the guy I buy my groceries from told me that I should give him a present of a football before I move back to America.  Um, why exactly should I do this?  Oh, right - it's because I'm a super rich American that can just shower Tanzanians with gifts at every opportunity.  My bad.

*  There are so many other things I could go into: the tiny nature of shopping carts, meaning I either buy for only a day or two or look like the giant, ridiculous consumer that I am (today they needed to call up some extra help when the mzungu and her overflowing cart of groceries - big order! came through), the recent experience I had in the mall when I received a marriage proposal from a Masai that I had never met before, the frequency of strangers coming up to me and touching me and starting up conversations.  I seriously feel like a zoo animal sometimes.  (On a side note, a friend was telling me how when her friend lived in India, her kids would be photographed every single time they were out....thankfully it's not that bad!)

Tomorrow is a new day, one in which I will have new reserves of patience, humility, grace, and love for my host culture (or maybe the day after tomorrow).  And one day, I'll look back on all these experiences that have grown me and shaped me and realize that they were preparing me for something in the future that I can't even imagine right now.  Truly, none of these no good, very bad days is wasted.

If nothing else, I'm comic relief for hundreds of people in Dar es Salaam....