Living In Transition

I have been thinking about this a lot recently because the Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) of Cameroon put out another newsletter, this one titled "Transitions." Now I'm probably one of about 10 people who reads it (not counting the proud parents) because I am a weird nerd. (I have embraced this about myself.) But anyway, I did read it and it's been on my mind since...

Transitions: the time in-between, neither the "then" nor the "now," the movement sandwiched by the beginning point and the end point, where you are temporarily while  trying to get somewhere else.

Peace Corps was a rough transition from school. No assignments, no one grading me or checking for completion, no set objectives to tell me if I'm on the right path or rubrics to tell me if I'm doing an A+ job. And Cameroon was a transition from America, where I needed to adjust to being the permanent minority and the gift-demanding culture and the slow pace and the descriptive Cam-fran-glais style of communication and a million other things. It wasn't an easy transition. I missed the comfort of home, the support of being surrounded by friends and family, the ease of moving through a culture you know inside and out because you grew up in it. I spent a lot of time feeling dazed, lost, and confused. I also wondered if I had made the right decision.

I shifted to Bafia, where I had a strict daily routine and lived with homestay family who I loved. Then I left that and all my new friends and moved on to Bansoa, where I knew almost no one and had no structure at all. Both places, everything felt so foreign.

During that time, everything felt so different and exotic. Then, almost everything...

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." - Ray Bradbury

Then, a few days ago, I'm on my way home and it happened again. I realized: everything felt normal. For a time, I was not missing college, and I was not worrying about the future. Peace Corps did not feel like my life "put on hold" as I had often said in the beginning; it was simply today, another day in which I was simply coming home from work - on the back of a motorcycle with an engine like a sputtering lawn mower, looking at spectacular views of farmland and banana trees red with dust and hills rolling under the hazy red sun into the distance.

Girls coloring at my kitchen table: normal.

Students debating whether or not police should arrest people
 for indecent dressing, aka short skirts: normal.
(Actually, this one still makes me mad.)

And my next thought is, "How did that even happen?!" Maybe everyone feels this way? Certainly a lot of PCVs do. As Beth Leuin said in her article, "I can't tell you the day my community first felt like home... And I certainly can't tell you how I will begin to transition back to life in America. But I can stop looking back and quit itching to jump ahead. I can accept the 'in-between' and just be."

Of course, that feeling vanishes soon enough, and I start thinking about job applications and next moves and traveling again. But for a while, I am not in transition, I simply am. And it feels légère like freedom. Maybe the real transitions only happen when you are not looking...


The contrarian in me argues that for everything to become normal is for everything to become passé, boring, uninteresting, uninspiring - and I never want to feel that way. This would be the moment to insert fluffy song lyrics about never losing your sense of wonder, always keeping that hunger, etc. Even after 17 months, I am still trying to remember: live in the moment, but never take that moment for granite (it's not an igneous rock).

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

There are so many beautiful things to see, so many friends to be made! Why worry about tomorrow?