there´s no place like home

I’m not sure why I find it necessary to reflect as each landmark date approaches and passes, but I do. Yesterday was April 7th, the date that marks nine months since I first set foot on the dry, rocky terrain of Cabo Verde. Hypothetically, I could have had a baby in the time that I have been here. Think how much changes in one’s life when a child is born. Has that much changed in my life? I do think so, though certainly not the same things in the same ways. My neighbour had a baby while I was in Praia. That means she got pregnant just as I was finishing up packing and saying goodbye to my friends and family. Nine months. For the first time, I feel like I have been here for a long time. Tuesday will mark seven months teaching in my tiny zone. My service here in this small town is two years; I have already completed more than one quarter. I have almost completed a full year of teaching. Wow.

I have not written anything in a while because I don’t feel like I can properly process things right now. I am in awe of the passing of time. Just recently the wind has begun to settle down and the temperature is creeping back up, soon to reach the sweltering heights that took so much adjusting when I first arrived. At home, the flowers are beginning to poke their heads up from the previously barren earth and the barely visible buds on the trees are beginning to bloom into the new year’s leaves. Here, there will be no green until much later. The rain will not return until after I realize one year in Cape Verde. Yet, I can feel change in the air. Maybe it is my own changes that fill me with this awe. Maybe it is the lengthening of the day. Maybe it is the slowly visible changes and renovations of the landscape in the city. Maybe it is a combination of all these things and others yet smaller and less noticeable. Regardless, Spring, I think, is universal. Despite the mildly insignificant seasonal changes, there is an unmistakeable feeling of change in the air.

Recently I was in Praia with the other volunteers. It was quite strange. In some ways their presence reminded me of the states. We all came together for the first time in Washington DC, and we remained together in Cape Verde for the first two and a half months as we began our first transitions and felt the weight of our changing lives. It was good to see everyone with new, adjusted eyes. In many ways it seemed we had all settled into our different roles in our different environments. Though at the core we were all the same, there were places where the fingerprints of Cape Verde had been left on the mould… myself included. This is a good thing.

Despite the conveniences and glories of Praia and all its city-like modernity, I was very happy to come home. Yes, I did say home. I think that is the right word for it now. It is not home in the sense of my childhood house and town that is filled to the brim with memories, hopes, dreams and friendships both old and new. That is home in a different way. The little, painfully blue cement house that covers my head is my home. The community that welcomes me with open arms filled with “saudade” (missing-ness…?) are a part of my home. The dirty little children that live next door but make it a point to come visit five times a day are part of my home. The never-ending challenge of balancing grammar, life skills and nurturing any spark of a desire to learn is part of my home. The morning walks to get bread, the afternoons carrying water and the evenings spent on the porch watching the sun go down and the lights on Brava come on; that is all part of my home. I think that it took leaving to realize how much a part of me it had all become, but upon returning it is hard to deny. It is good to be home.