Culture Shocked

"You see, I told you it would only be a couple of seconds and you'd be back here."

I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until I exhaled at the sound of Jason's voice from the used book counter. I had been back in America for just over 14 hours and my first shift at work was about to start.

The night before I arrived in Seatac while it was still dark. My sister and brother-in-law settled me in their house, where we chatted for a few minutes before I passed out on their couch. By morning they were gone. I had two dogs to walk and needed to navigate my way from West Seattle to the University district. While walking the dogs a car pulled up along side me and a strange woman asked me for directions- in English. I smiled and apologized for not being able to help her. By the time she drove off I remembered my iphone had google maps, but it was too late.

After leaving Burkina, I'd flown to Casablanca where I spent all 20-odd hours of my layover in the airport. I didn't have a lot of money left and I did have several very heavy bags, and Casablanca isn't on the list of Moroccan cities I feel comfortable navigating on my own (as I've never been outside the airport.) I elected to stay inside, linger creepily near electrical outlets, and watch some episodes of True Blood the delightfully awful TV show that Chev had gotten me hooked on and Rob had allowed me to steal all 4 seasons off of his hard drive. I watched TV, I read, I drank coffee and ate croissants. For all of its charm, the Casablanca airport is not a vegetable-friendly place (I found menus that included salads but no single place that actually had the ability to make or serve a salad.) By the time I got to Spain I was in desperate need of the salad, tortilla and tomato juice that I spent nearly half of my total worth in Euros on. I had about 12 hours until my flight, so I found a cozy place to sleep and watched some more True Blood. At this point, I should add, the only white people I've seen since I left Chev are either vampires, shape-shifters or Anna Paquin. I'd also had very little sleep on some very hard floors and quite a lot of dramamine. So when an Iberia Air employee with an unfortunate combination of pale skin, gaunt cheeks and really unflatteringly dark make-up took my boarding pass, I had a brief moment of hesitancy about getting too close to her.

My blood happily un-sucked (to my knowledge) I boarded the plane to Chicago. It was a long flight, half-empty, and the kind British woman in my row relocated to another row so that we could both stretch out and sleep. The food they served me (vegetarian meals being, apparently, synonymous with vegan) was almost exclusively vegetable, a welcome change from airport food. I arrived in Chicago, surrounded by the unusual chatter of English. While I'd gotten quite good at tuning out the chatter of Arabic, French, and any number of Burkinabe languages, English was such a strange combination of unfamiliar and stunningly comprehensible that I couldn't tune out the thousands of conversations I could suddenly understand.

The first test came just after customs. It was a small, brightly-lit place selling vegetables and eggs on round bread rolls with holes in the middle. I ordered my sandwich, and approached the cashier. He said some numbers to me and I handed him a small gold rectangle with some numbers on it. I eyed him suspiciously waiting for him to reject this clearly made up form of payment. He swiped the card through his computer and handed me my receipt. I continued to stare at him with deep skepticism so he added a slightly confused sounding "have a nice day?" I moved on, consuming my bagel in a corner and cursing O'hare for being yet another airport without free wifi (thank you, sea-tac, for making me a spoiled brat of a traveller.) Then I remembered my cell phone had internet and would actually work since I was no longer overseas. This stunning revelation entertained me for most of the rest of my 8 hour layover.

Before boarding my last flight home, I remembered that America Airlines doesn't believe in feeding its customers. I gathered my things and abandoned my corner, heading to my gate, the lovely K-4. There, next to the gate, was the single most beautiful sight I've ever seen.

In glowing, alien-bright letters, it said Burrito Beach. I almost cried with joy as I ordered my veggie burrito, while the annoyed woman working the counter glared at me. I had waited all summer for this moment.

Jason came around the used book counter and hugged me. He wasn't a dream. I was really home. From there I went to each department, strangely feeling like I'd both been gone for years and never left at all. Coworkers hugged and questioned and complimented me on my tan. One particularly perceptive friend noted that I looked like I'd figured out some important things while I was away. I hope she's right.

I've been back for about two weeks now, and I've had a total of two days off since then. I wanted to work as much as possible (being both completely broke and in need of a new apartment.) Most of my belongings are in boxes in my sister's basement and the idea of going through them is just too exhausting to manage. I'm finally starting to get over the culture shock of being back. Every time I see one of my classmates from Morocco I can feel myself getting calmer, more relieved. It isn't that I'm not happy to see my friends back home, but sometimes the whole summer feels like I dreamt it, like I was only gone for a few seconds, and seeing Kristi or Devin or Ryan or Zoe reminds me that, at the very least, it was a dream we all shared for a little while.

Last post from Africa

Shivering in an air conditioned room, I'm so adjusted to heat now 85 feels like sweater weather.  The moon is almost quarter full again, Ramadan long forgotten and my stomach full, oddly enough, of Chinese food. I'm just a few hours away from heading to the Ouagadougou airport and flying home.

I know that when I step off of the plane in Seattle I will be swept up in the return to my old routine. I will be overcome with the urge to resume the life I once knew as the person I once was. Habits are so much more convenient than choices. I will forget this adventure, or it will dull to the abstraction of a barely-remembered dream.

There are certain things I would like to remember, certain changes I would like to cling to, certain parts of this experience I hope to carry with me into whatever I return home to.

I want to remember the streets of Fes, the classroom where we studied, the Arabic (and Darija) that I learned. I want to speak it often and well.

I want to remember the moment I realized my classmates had become my friends, I want to keep each of them present if not in life than in memory.

I want to remember: the stars in the desert at night, the feeling of heat radiating off of the sand, the colors and the voices and the music. The oceans in Tangier and Asliah and Essouira and the cool blue walls of Chefchaouen. The long train rides across the country. The Riad, Ali, my host family, Khadija, Moustafa, my hanoot friends, the cafes and the cats.

The musketeers. The fantastic four. The sisterhood, the bro code, Jan & Rashid. Rabat and Sale. Our nicknames, our inside jokes, our hypothetical conversations. The sound of the prayer read through Sahoor, the warm companionship of Iftar.

Paris, little North Africa, more shabab. Park naps and shopping and museums and picnics and bartenders.

Burkina. I want to remember the red, red roads and the blue skies in Gallo. I want to remember the lightening storms the days of rain and reading and silence, the bike rides, the sunsets, the food we shared and the food we made for others. I want to remember the waterfalls, the people who put us up for the night, the chatter of Moore, the transit house, new friends I may never see again. I want to keep the calm person I've become and the optimism I wish I could pack home in my suitcase. I want to hold on to this feeling like it hasn't been a year since I last saw my best friend, so that the next year without her doesn't seem so long.

On this trip I have gone through 6 months worth of contact lenses, 5 pairs of shoes, more hairclips than I can count, 2 water bottles, 11 books, 3 pairs of sunglasses and the first few seasons of sex and the city (long story.) I didn't publish my book or finish my novel. I did learn some French, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

I have regrets, but fewer than I did when I left home.

I have friends who love me and friends I love, many of whom I doubt I'll see again.

 (I got my heart broken, but just a little and ever so politely.)

I walked on the beach with one of my favorite authors. I saw the Mona Lisa and a couple hundred more paintings I liked even more. I've been "married" to at least 5 different men, and I now have more sister wives than I have sisters.

I spent more money than I had, I lost my apartment and I decided firmly on two mutually exclusive plans for 2012 (peace corps and law school.)

I did not learn to love olives, despite my best intentions.

I lost my grandmother.

I found out I'll be getting two nieces or nephews.

I've missed home so much it hurt and hoped I'd never go back in the same breath.

After 7 years, I finally finished my degree.

Somehow it is September now.

I'm getting on a plane.

BIKE TOUR!!

So a bunch of crazy PCV's decided to bike about 1800km (about the distance from NYC to Orlando.) My best  friend is one of the permanent riders/organizers of this madness, so when I decided to visit her for the first week, I naturally got added to the list.

Just to be totally honest- I haven't ridden a bike since 2006. Chev took me on some short rides in her village and we biked around Ouaga quite a lot but I haven attempted anything near the 60-80km distances we'd be covering each day. In the Bukinabe sun. But I figured Chev wouldn't ask me to do anything that would actually kill me, so I went along with it. Here is a rundown of our days:

Day 0: We didn't actually start the official tour on Tuesday, but we did bike about 10-15km from Banfoura to Karfiguela. This was my first encounter with muddy dirt roads (we're in the southwest which is the rainy part of Burkina. Also it's rainy season.) We got our asses kicked by some locals at soccer (I have the blood blisters and a soccer-ball-patterened bruise on my thigh to prove it) and then we had amazing dinner at a restaurant one of the Karfiguela volunteers is helping to open. Rainstorms foiled our camping plans and we got to bed pretty late, falling asleep to the sound of monsoon rain and flashes of lightening.

Day 1: We woke up, biked 10 km, then had breakfast. I'm not usually the type of human who can function, let alone do physical exercise, before my morning cup of coffee. Luckily we arrived with only minor mishap, and continued on the rest of the way to Orodara. The countryside we're biking through is unspeakably beautiful (photos when I get an internet connection that will permit it) and cruising along actually didn't kill me, so I must have been in better shape than I'd suspected.

Day 2: Today we biked from Orodara to Bobo, which was about 80km and mostly up hills. I was having a pretty great time (aided by the copious amounts of dried mango we bought in Orodara) and the weather was lovely and mild all morning. Sadly the sun came out in full force after about the halfway point, but I think I managed to avoid getting too badly burned. I spent most of the day being chill and biking with Chev and Lauren (who have more fun and take biking less seriously than some of the more hardcore riders we're travelling with) but around 20km outside of Bobo a combination of my legs cramping up every time we stopped and the great music on my iPod made me want to bike fast. Really fast. As fast as possible. I cruised into Bobo all by myself with none of the PCVs in sight. It was about this moment that I remembered I don't speak French and can't ask the locals for directions and also that I had no idea where in Bobo (which is quite a large city) I was supposed to go. A smarter person would have waited for the others to catch up, but I knew 3 or 4 of them were ahead of me and figured I'd just see them and know where to go. FOOLISH. Half-hour later I was biking around in the blazing sun with a flat tire and no idea where I was. I managed to string together enough French to ask a few people, which had decidedly mixed results. Eventually I had the good sense to backtrack and found Chev coordinating a search party for me. It's been a really, really long day, but I also feel positively euphoric that I survived my two days of the tour and had so much fun doing it.

Ok, that's all till Chev and I are back in Ouaga and then I get to play the ever-fun game of living in airports. Photos will be posted soon, inshallah.