Still so Far Out of Reach

"I hid my soiled hands behind my back somewhere along the line I must have gone off track with you. Excuse me, I think I mistaken you for somebody else, somebody who gave a damn, somebody more like myself."
- Jewel

May 5-8, 2009

I don't have much of an update for this week. I am going to be honest, I spent a lot of it in bed. My mom told me before I left that she felt like there would be life before Africa and life after. I was not really sure what she meant at the time, but I think now I do. A great friend of mine who is from Tanzania told me that she feels like Americans are afraid to mourn the loss of themselves. That it is okay to let go. I think about how in a few weeks my Tanzania adventure will reach the year mark. I think about all of the horrible things I have experienced here. The raw pain that is still so deep in many ways that I don't even write about it here in my blog. I think about the things I have seen in Africa that I wish I hadn't and I mourn for the ordinary American girl who has left me never to be the same.

Then today I get an email from a friend from high school, totally out of the blue. I can really say that this email was the best thing that happened to me all week. Her life is the kind that I am giving up by being here: filled with friends and family, the life that I miss. She is reading my blog and wrote about how my experience has made her re-evaluate what is important to her and her family. And it causes me to remember all the amazing things that have happened here in the past year. All of the things that the average American will never experience first-hand. The pain in my chest subsides a bit and I wonder about this new person who is emerging.

"Well she was an American girl raised on promises and she couldn't help thinkin' that there was a little more to life somewhere else. After all it was a great big world with lots of places to run to... God it's so painful something that's so close and still so far out of reach."
- Tom Petty