Thursday, March 31, 2011

Crumbs from Your Table.

Last night, ants invaded my house. When I say invaded, I mean massive ground-level infantry movements. Think Napoleon, think Normandy, think Bombs Over Baghdad. This crawling black carpet woke me from sleep and I flip on a flashlight to see their thousands of singly-driven crumb-seeking eyes.

The impetus for this attack was a slight adjustment to my box of tea. This shift in land mass allowed them access to my previously unreachable hanging basket of dirty dishes.

Somehow the master commander of the six-legged army received news of this development. And the invasion began. A futile effort at deterring and squashing left me with bitten ankles and a few too many unwelcome visitors in my PJ bottoms. Thus conquered, I pulled a Chamberlain, tucked my mosquito net tight, and returned to bed. My appeasement wasn’t total though – I did move the tea box. As I tried to sleep through the marching, the little invaders did give me some interesting thoughts.

How is it that ants know exactly where to swarm to find sustenance? To them, my two-room hut must seem as vast as this great big world seems to me and yet, they did not dally, they do not wander lost in corners, embark on fruitless quests up chair legs and into cupboards. To watch them on their trek across the savanna of my cemented, pock-marked floor is to witness a purposeful migration.

Why is it then that we must move so aimlessly across the earth? Seeking and so seldom finding the nourishment that makes our journey worth the while? To just be plopped down and know instinctively where to go to find that crumb that will save you, now that would be an awesome gift.

Or so I used to think. I wrote these opening lines months ago, the bones of a blog entry never completed, pushed aside by the vacations and novels and chitenge projects that kept me from delving into this little ol’ notebook at site. At the time, the ants seemed enviable, in their purposeful marching towards food. I was torn between committing to another year in Zambia working who-knows-where doing who-knows-what, or moving back to the States, and facing similarly vague employment choices. I had been intensely happy in my two years in the village. My cottage had nourished me, fed me the foods I had not known I was hungry for. My electric-less, plumbing-less existence, the long lazy days had been my teacher and I had learned. As Ntozake Shange wrote, “I have found God in myself and I have loved her, I have loved her fiercely.”
But that life had to end, is now ending. And the world, at that moment, seemed too vast. I was an ant in two-room hut. Facing choices – grad school, job search, more volunteering, or as one friend suggested, a move to some ashram where I could do yoga and write – without any inkling of which way I should go.

I write this now wrapped in the cozy comfort of a decision made. Candles flicker and groundnuts roast on the brazier. Through the open window float moths and the voices of my neighbors over evening meals, the full moon adding tones of festivity to their rapid KiKaonde cadences. I have eight such nights left. By the time I type these words, Kamayembe will be gone to me.

I have a new job here – and a good one. I’ll still be a Peace Corps Volunteer but I’ll be working 9-to-5 as an extension agent at an Zambian health NGO. I’ll be helping HIV-positive people to tell their stories, documenting their lives in articles and pictures, and assisting with community radio awareness programs. Though I’ll live in Lusaka – with a real apartment and nearby grocery stores (!) – my job will send me on the road, into the field, one to two weeks a month. Which is what I want. With my new life will come constant internet access and conveniences, so hopefully I will seem more connected to all of you across the ocean.

It was not an easy decision to remain in Africa another year and I did not make it lightly. I miss all you loved ones immensely. I crave my friends’ laughter over good coffee and confessions over good red wine; the warmth of family gatherings and the anonymity of walking an American street, not always being reduced to a race and a gender.

But I also know that this is right. I love Zambia. I love Peace Corps. And I am not yet ready to give them up. They still have much to teach to me. As part of my new contract, I have one month’s paid leave to New York. Right now, I’m thinking October unless anyone has any strong pulls for a different time.

I no longer envy ants.

I still don’t know, instinctively, where in this fascinating world I should scurry at any moment. But I no longer would want to. I have come to value the wandering, as clichéd and trite as that may be. I know that the nourishment we seek stays in no one place, that each day lived with a commitment to love, each breath drawn in happiness, feeds us.

And what crumb could be sweeter than that?