Missing You (October 6, 2006)

"Without you the hand gropes/ the ear hears/ the pulse beats/ life goes on, but I'm gone/ 'cause I die without you."

Recently I've been desperately missing my friends and family. This isn't the traditional homesickness kind of missing, but rather the missing that comes with being entirely lonely. I generally don't think of myself as someone who is difficult to get along with, or someone who is a bore or overbearing, but I find myself feeling frantically alone in Busia. Among other things, it has been hard to meet people here. The expats generally stick to other expats in a division that I find disturbing and a bit problematic. I'm having a terrible time meeting local Africans, though, because I am so unused to the social dynamics here. Generally there is no young 20-something crowd that you would find in a bigger city. It seems that most people, particularly women, go from children to married overnight. Gender norms make befriending guys a strained relationship, and almost every friendship that starts up is quickly followed by requests for money, or an all-expense paid trip to the U.S.

There's not really a time of life when folks are fabulous and single out here. It also means that the most traditional way to socialize is to go over to someone's house or to share a meal or tea. While this is perfectly lovely, I often feel stupid because my Swahili is so poor that I can't keep up a detailed or animated conversation. On the subject of Swahili, I worry that I am hitting my learning curve, and am thus, not improving, but also that I will never have enough free time from work to really be serious/hardcore about my language acquisition. Also, I have never really made peace with being silent, and I find it incredibly difficult to have conversations where tens of minutes go by in perfect silence.

I miss having animated conversations about current events, foreign policy, elections, the state of the world, hegemony and empire, the OC, and a number of other things I have been spoiled by for years. I find myself incredibly cautious in broaching anything remotely political - be it Kenya's recent moves towards a single party state (again), corruption, ethnic fractionalization, or democratic participation. I find whole parts of my heart turning into stone and parts of my brain feeling like they are atrophying. While economics is a field that I am happy to engage with more deeply, sometimes I want to throw all the numbers out the window and ask how people really expect to enumerate fairness and equality and progress and how these definitions are written anyway.

I am ashamed to admit that I really miss soymilk, and by extension, I really miss soy chai. The next time I eat Thai food I may die of happiness. I am disturbingly becoming sick of Indian food. If I eat another deep-fried meal, I think my arteries will close on the spot and refuse to channel anymore blood.

I didn't expect life to be glamorous, or even particularly easy, but right now there are many more sad than happy days, and I am frustrated that I am no longer excited. I wanted so much to be in love with my experiences here, but at the moment I am not. Perhaps this was my folly, and maybe this expectation is just as problematic as the expectations of some to come to foreign countries and "save the world." I didn't want to save the world, but I am worried that I am losing myself.