reflection

I arrived home 2 weeks before Christmas and as far as I could tell my reverse culture shock wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Other than coming off the plane in flip-flops in Charlotte where it had been snowing (shock to the system coming straight from summer). A couple of days later I was in the grocery store looking at the produce selection and I was overwhelmed with the size of the onions and bananas. Yes there was lots more choice but I was used to that (most other countries in the world don’t have the amount of selection we do) but I’d never before noticed that the food was just bigger…the bananas are at least 2 if not 3 times as big as the ones found in Malawi and the onions are triple the size as well.
How do you reflect on an entire year? I guess you don’t really. You take it in scenes or episodes. One of the biggest things that keeps coming back to me is the forgiveness of children. Dorothy would read a devotion each morning with the teachers before we would pray and then go to assembly. One was how every day was a new day, we need to let go of what happened yesterday and even what we’ve heard from other teachers and let the kids have the clean slate that we get from them each day. There were a couple of days (probably more than that but I’m keeping this positive) when I felt like all morning was just spent yelling and shouting at the kids to get their attention or keep them on task or whatever. I was the big ogre and I couldn’t imagine the kids wanting to come back the next day. But I would get them lined up at the door to go home and they would all wave to me and say “see you tomorrow” with the biggest smiles—even the ones who had been sulky or in tears just before. And the next morning they would be there with smiles on their faces, ready for another day—whatever may come.
Another thing I noticed about teaching was that every day I would go in with an idea of how it would go—and I was almost always wrong. It would be a Monday so I was expecting chaos and headaches because they’d been out all weekend but contrary to expectation it would be a great day. Then comes Tuesday and I would think that since Monday was so good, it must mean that Tuesday is going to be similar, but it would be a hurricane day. Horrendous and I would be surprised to have any hair left at the end of the morning. Friday would be forecast (in my head) as chaos again because it is almost the weekend and it would be fine and we would get through more than I could have possibly imagined. So I learned that preconceived notions are usually wrong—I don’t think I was successful in breaking the habit of predicting the tone of the day but I became less surprised when I had been so wrong.I find that it is similar to me going into new situations. I find that I do not usually set expectations when I have no idea what I’m getting into. I had no idea what going to Africa would be like or my first day of teaching and so I just let it come and figured I could and would deal with whatever came my way. Though I’ll admit that after day one in kindergarten I was ready to pack up and come home. And so going to the new and unknown possibilities scare me less than going into a place where I feel that I should know what to expect.

Thank you for the opportunity to experience and grow and learn as much as I did in Africa. It was an amazing time of discovery and adventure. Love, Jessi