...although the only hippo I can see right now is made of painted stone, has his mouth wide open, and is to be perfectly honest much gaudier and less impressive than real hippos.
In the past week, I have spent a lot of time and met a lot of people in the small town of Balaka, about a thirty minute drive from where we're staying. Hopping on the minibus (public transport) and heading to Balaka each morning has become the closest thing to a work routine I've had since I got here. For the most part, I am seeking out religious leaders in the area and asking questions about their programs, their congregations, their messages, and their views on the life problems and concerns of young people in Balaka (which here pretty much means anyone between the ages of 15 and 25). My shpiel is that I am preparing for a project that will start next year (which is def. true of the larger project I'm employed by right now) and that I will be back next year to conduct the project with a questionnaire for the youth in the churches (which is true pending financial support and funding). People like to hear that I'll be back, they like that sense of continuity and they often ask me for how long I'll be here next year. I want to say 4, 5, even 6 months--ideally for the research, I would come back for at least that long. Yet there's a hitch. I love being here on one level, and can't wait to come back, and yet along with that emotion coexists so much homesickness. At the same time as I'm promising a lengthy return visit, I'm counting the days before I get back to the comfort, love, friendship, and support I have at home; and this has only been a five-week visit, and I've only been here for three of those weeks. I wonder in my heart if I really have it in me to stay for longer, to really live here and and to even more deeply enter into the experience of life here. I want it and I don't. I think it would be different after some time passed, as I would hope that real, supportive friendships would emerge in this place eventually, yet I still can't help feeling like I'm too tied to home to do what my adventurous side is working towards.
This is something that certainly can't be resolved in the short term. I can't know what it would be like to live here until I do, for something longer than a few weeks. But I do wonder, for example, how those peace corps workers and the like do it--do I simply not have the personality for it?
Hmmm.... maybe the hippo knows.
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