Just over a month to go!

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