Ah, the difficulty of being back. Three weeks later, after gorging myself and indulging in the excesses of American life for all this time, what do I do? I’m finally willing to wade through the murky waters of South Africa, and what happened while I was at service sites. Ready to step through what I saw, what I felt, and connect those (in a logical, step-by-step fashion) to what I should be doing here.
The first thing is, it hasn’t been three weeks. It’s been over 8 weeks now. Service sites ended while we were in Pietermaritzburg, and then we went on a safari, traveled for a week, lived with a (wonderful) homestay family in Cape Town, lived at a university in Cape Town, lived in a hotel in Cape Town, and flew back. So this stuff is sort of far from my mind. But last night, as I started talking to Brett a little about it, I realized something. I really really want to think about it. I want to go back and remember, and as I started to remember I almost went off on a tangent that could have lasted a couple hours. Fortunately, I saved Brett from that horrible fate. But now I want to think about it.
And the other thing is, What do I want from this? I remember the first day of orientation, when I was seeing that so many of my friends were going to South Africa, and I was really excited. Youthful, inexperienced excitement, immersed in naivety of what this experience was going to be. Immersed in a naivety of who I was going to interact with. Really, having a perfect, idealized concept of what it would be to be in South Africa, and pretending to not have expectations. And what did I say I wanted to have happen? To experience God’s love and get to know him better, and to have an expanded worldview. Most of my focus was on having an expanded worldview.
Now listen, there is nothing wrong with an expanded worldview. I think it’s nice, and I think everyone should go for that. Everyone should travel outside of the country, to multiple different places, for extended periods of time, to see that life isn’t confined to simply the way you live it. There are ways to live life that you have never dreamed of, and these can begin to be realized by seeing other people live their lives. I am a strong proponent of having an expanded worldview. The thing is, if I walk away from this semester in South Africa with just an expanded worldview, then I’m completely missing the point. That’s like visiting the grand canyon, seeing all the majesty and beauty of it, and walking away thinking “what a cool color red!” Don’t get me wrong, the red may have been very cool. But you could even say the fact that the rocks were that color red was better. Or maybe that there’s a big ass hole in the ground that’s that color red. If I were to walk away from South Africa with just an expanded worldview, I’m only touching on portions of what I could realize from this experience.
So now, after a long, philosophical shower, I know this. I know that I don’t just want to walk away from South Africa knowing that they live differently. I don’t want to walk away just being able to say I bungy jumped from the highest damn bungy point in the world. I don’t want to be able to say that I worked in a township completely devoid of any emotion (But I don’t want to fake the emotion at all. Pet peeve.) I don’t just want to tell people I lived in a Coloured township, so they think I’m all cultured and open-minded. I didn’t do anything just for the sake of doing it (That’s a lie. Bungy jumping, wine-tasting, body paint at a rugby game. All to say I did it. I obviously mean apart from the touristy stuff.). I did things for the insight they would give me, for the change that would occur in me.
Now that I see that walking away with what I originally expected won’t be enough. That would be a disappointment. But what do I walk away with? I’m ready to read through my blog and relive these experiences, but I like to have some idea of what I’m getting myself into. The thing is, I have no idea. I know I’m getting change, and I’ve just been dormant and surviving the past 3 weeks in America. I don’t know what though. I don’t know how these experiences will shape me. I guess it’s the type of thing that I’ll find out more soon enough.
I guess it’s the type of thing that when I look back at the beginning of this process, I’ll see myself as a wide-eyed, inexperienced, youthful guy, full of excitement and naivety. I guess it’s just an endless cycle.
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