In between my four morning and two afternoon classes today, I showed around two Peace Corps staff members from Maputo. I was to tell them all about the projects that I'm involved in and how I got that way - in doing so, I realized how integrated I am into my site and how much my hands are dipped into. I suppose it's a nice feeling, knowing and seeing how far I've come, but realizing once again that I'm working towards ends I'm about to abandon, is somewhat depressing. It hasn't really sunk in yet, and I'm not expecting to get "senior-itis" (because I didn't in high school or college), but I feel like it could be demoralizing at some point to envision myself leaving all of this.
When I came back from a weekend in the provincial capital yesterday and stepped onto familiar ground once again, I realized how much like home it's gotten. I guess your bubble of comfort slowly extends outwards from some central location, be that home, work, a friend's place, etc., and slowly you feel more and more comfortable more of the time because it looks and smells and feels the same. We are truly creatures of habit - we need everything to be roughly uniform day in and day out so that we can get our minds around the things that are different and not worry about that which does not matter.
So someday I'll come back here and see the brightly-colored playground and BP gas station on the way to my site, then the bank and the restaurant with the green and yellow awning, then my school, and my house, and it will all seem so wonderful and exciting because it will be another comfortable place for me, like Cleveland, Avon, Collinsville and Canton. But I'll sit and think and wonder what might have happened had I stayed and realized the projects I had started until their logical ends (and not their artificial ends). And I'll forget about all the things I missed and how temporary life truly felt during those months because life will be predictable and the people I missed will be around me once again.
And so it's in these 9 months that I need to make everything happen and I know that I can.
Peace
John
