No place like home
“It was… interesting! I’m glad I went and I’m SUPER glad I’m back.”
This has been my formulaic response to pretty much everyone who’s asked me the “How was Ghana?” question in the past few weeks. It captures very little of my experience, but it is honest. It was a once in a lifetime experience, but I came back with one huge takeaway:
“HOME ROCKS.”
This exact phrase comes to me probably 30 times over the course of a day now. I did realize, though, that although home is definitely a place, it’s also a certain level of comfort. What I mean is that I didn’t have to be at my parents’ house in Boulder to feel like I was really home. I flew straight from Ghana to Washington, D.C., where me parents picked me up and we drove to a family reunion on the Jersey shore. And I immediately felt at home. It was the people, the familiarity and the comforts of the U.S. that comprised the most important feeling of home, rather than the physical place.
It didn’t really take me much time to adjust back to life here — I’m so familiar with my day to day schedule and the people that I’m spending my time with that it can slip my mind every once in awhile that I spent the last couple months of my life in Africa. I just always know that I’m happy to be where I am and with the people that are the most important to me.
I won’t lie and say that this summer was completely a positive experience. I’m obviously still sorting through everything that I experienced, and I’m not sure which parts of my experiences will end up in the positive bin and which will end up in the negative bin — I’m sure it will change and each experience’s meaning will change as I move along. Who knows? What was once seemingly the worst part of my time in Ghana might end up being the most helpful to me in the future. I’m trying not to force a meaning out of everything that happened this summer — I’ll let it come to me naturally, if it ever comes to me at all in a way that I can articulate.
All I know for the time being, is that I’m incredibly happy with the life that I’m privileged to have on this side of the Atlantic, and it’s not something that I’ll be taking for granted for awhile.
