With less than a week left until I leave Tanzania, I have such mixed feelings. I know that I am going home, and that New Zealand will always be home, but in some ways it feels like I am leaving a home now too. I keep writing in my journal, "How can I leave?"
I am looking forward to going back to New Zealand. Sometimes over the past few weeks, I have wanted the days to rush by. I want to see my family, eat my favourite foods, pet my cats, go to church, sleep in my own bed, and have my little luxuries, like my perfume and Pandora bracelet, back. I have written lists and lists of things to see and do and eat. I am looking forward to constant electricity, high speed Internet, clean feet. I want to go home.
Other times, I want these last few days to last forever. These are the last moments I will spend with my beautiful babies. It will be soon enough that I won't ever see them again. By the time I return, they will be back with their families, at Children's Homes or perhaps adopted.
Mosquito net kisses, sticky fingers, long cuddles, baby hands. These babies have been my life for the past few months. I knew when I came to Neema, that it was inevitable not to get attached to the babies. I knew it would hurt when I had to leave. I saw other volunteers come and go. I saw them cry as they left, favourite babies being taken from their arms, the tears that followed. Some of those volunteers were only here for a couple of weeks. I've been here for eight months. All the babies have wormed their way inside my stubborn heart.
I will miss them so much.
I will not miss the sound of the mosque in the morning, dogs barking, slugs in the shower, giant cockroaches, milk that tastes like cow, ugali and mboga, dust everywhere. I will not miss sharing a house with up to 8 other people. While I don't mind doing it, I certainly will not miss changing a dozen plus dirty nappies every day or cleaning up copious quantities of baby vomit.
I will miss the nannies, Rose and Violeth and Jackie and Mama Musa especially. I will miss the friends I've made here, good times on the dala dala, cande-lit evenings, Aston and Jessica and their children, the way Meru looks in the twilight, clear mornings and clearer nights, greeting everyone who passes you, big smiles, white teeth in dark faces, women carrying babies on their backs, fresh mangoes. So many of these things are just a part of everyday life here - I probably won't even notice many of them until I am gone.
On January 25, I wrote this in my journal:
"How can I leave? Long walks with the Havilah children. Sun going down, mountain silhouetted in the distance. Kili rising above the clouds. Clear water, monkeys chattering, voices laughing. Stars overhead, endless sky. Bare feet in the dusty, sun-baked earth. How can I leave this place? These children? This life?"
The answer is, I don't know. I don't know how I can leave. White hands holding small black ones. Walking everywhere. Loving all the time.
I have no special skills. I am not a teacher, a preacher, a healer. I believe God sent me to Africa to love. To hug children, to mother orphans, to kiss babies, to make friends with mamas. That is why I will be back. Love is the key to changing everything. One person cannot change the world, but if I can show one child, one person, Christ's love in me; if I can help love them into a better life, than everything here has been worth it.
xoxo,
-Hannah
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