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17 June 2012

My Western Africanized World

I've been busy. Really busy. In the middle of my busyness I am trying to figure out how to live in the western world Africanized. I'm trying to figure out how to survive a 45 minute commutes both ways, make it home to dinner with my family, and still manage to volunteer, have a social life, maintain an exercise routine, and find space to meditate upon my Holy Book. It is not working. And yet it is. In the midst of the chaos in which I have created, I am doing what I love.

I love working with Africans. I love that my boss is African. I love (and hate) that my program staff in Sudan have gone MIA from the internet and I am trying to write a grant.

I love that I live with family and can have dinner with them at six o'clock- like we always have, and always will. That fish Mondays will forever remain in my home. That I can become creative in what to cook with my mother and that my dad is okay in trying new things.

I love that my best friend lives minutes from home and that her children squeal with delight when I show up and teach them how to roll down hills, and splash in puddles, and read them bed time stories and tuck them into their bed at night.

Yet I am struggling to live in this western Africanized world of mine where I go from drinking tea and saying Insha'Allah it will happen and then going home to look at pinterest. Can I do that? Sometimes I think it is easier to live in one world or the other. Not this combination world of reading, writing, and knowing about the troubles of the horn of Africa while living this comfortable life. It is hard to do.

For a while, I had a loyal fan base of readers but then I got busy. Trying to figure out how to live in Africa while I live in the US. It is a complicated city. It is a complicated, globalized world. And Insha'Allah, I will figure it out.