It has been just over a week since
I quit my job to get ready to leave for my assignment in Senegal. I typically hate to not be busy with
employment, school, or both.
However, with the upcoming undertaking, I am relishing the time I set
aside to prepare myself for my next adventure. In approximately one month I will be leaving my hometown for
2.5 years to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. My invitation materials describe my
work there to be centered on agroforestry in a rural area of the Northern
region of Senegal.
I
have begun to notice facets of my life that will be wildly different when I
move abroad; the food I will eat, the daily life, and the people I will see
everyday. Even small things like
the taste of the water I will drink and the sounds of the birds in the nearby
trees will be completely different.
There is something irresistibly exciting for me about how much my life
will be unfathomably different in two months.
I
guess I have gotten somewhat of a need for excitement through change as a
result of my past few years.
During my senior year of college, I studied abroad in the tropical
rainforests of Queensland, Australia.
It was there that I gained a love for sustainable forestry and a
lifestyle of close, almost tribe-like, friendships. For 6 months, I lived in a cabin in the rainforest, and saw
the same 30 people all-day, everyday.
We spent that time learning about the local ecosystem, and how the
people of Queensland depended upon the health of the flora and fauna.
After college, I decided to go do
something completely different than my major, just for kicks. I moved to Sonoma County, California
and starting working for a winery.
I worked 10 hours a day cleaning, crushing, and pressing grapes for
artisan wines. I became an
epicure, and began to appreciate the relationship between the maker of food and
wine and the land it came from.
The nuance of terroir reflected in the composition of delicious food was
needless to say, decadent for a 22 year-old. Even with my newly found love for all things gastronomy, I
decided to leave again for something a little more inclined with my career
passions.
I took a job with the Forest
Service, working near the gorgeous locale of Lake Tahoe. I performed a medley of tasks for the
Recreation, Lands, and Wilderness program of the Tahoe National Forest. My days varied from running an outreach
booth a local street fair, to cutting though downed logs over trails with a
chainsaw, to surveying wilderness areas in a backpacking trip through the
Sierra Nevada’s. My days at Lake
Tahoe were filled with beautiful locales, demanding physical work, and learning
about the role of public agencies.
I gained an intimate appreciation for the work that public agencies do,
and the wilderness character that they protect. The locals in Tahoe demonstrated a fierce love for their
outdoor public lands that are in the care of agencies like the Forest
Service. That caring translated to
both good and bad interactions with the public. One lesson I learned is that, in a public agency, you will
never please everyone. Instead,
preserving and enforcing what is best for everyone must be the priority.
I wanted to garner and pursue a
career that embodied my passions, and the lessons that I had learned since high
school. I found the PCMI program
at the University of Washington was the best next step for me. And now we have come full circle.
Every time I tell someone that I am
moving to Africa, I get a combination of the same responses:
“Are you excited? “
“Boy, I bet you will miss the food
here!”
“Why would you do that?”
“Aren’t you scared of the crime?”
I have to say that observing the responses has been
interesting to say the least. The
viewpoint of Americans on Africa is limited, mostly due to the fact that their
only real interaction comes from news media, and movies. I am really looking forward to one of
travel’s greatest gifts: expansion of understanding of different cultures and
people.
There
is one area that pretty much everyone with whom I spoke asked about that was
spot on though:
“Are
you going to miss your parents and friends?”
Out of all of the sacrifices that
this adventure will must take, 2.5 years away from my loved ones is the
dearest. I know that they will be
fine without me, since their lives will not be drastically changed by my
absence, but it is their absence that I will notice the most. 2.5 years is a long time. When I return, I will still have an
image of my friends and family that I will have kept while I was away, but the
reality is that they will have changed as much as I. I am concerned about the reverse culture shock I will
experience coming home and things being different than I left them. That might be the greatest price for my
adventure.
But it won’t stop me. I know that I need my upcoming travels in
order to be happy and content.
Traveling is an experience both inside and out: for as much as you
experience outwardly, you grow inwardly.
I am looking forward to the person I will become.
My next entries shouldn’t be as heavy….haha
