Peace Corps Hangover

Readjustment is turning out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Even though I'm only about a week and a half deep, it's rough. I think it's mostly because I have a hard time sitting still, and haven't been without a job since I was 16. But now here I am, an RPCV, with no job, no income, no car. I've only been able to leave the house once in the past week. I'm a 25-year-old loser.

I'm trying hard not to feel that way, but there is a certain pang of uselessness to my current lifestyle. I can't even take the dog for walks in the woods because it's hunting season. So instead, it's me and a whole bunch of America's Next Top Model, which, you know, is cool... I love Tyra, but enough is enough. And 10 days of inactivity is more than enough.

I've applied to about 20 jobs, but that doesn't make me employed. I've organized, renamed, backed-up, and appropriately sorted the 3,000 photos I took while in Africa, but that doesn't make me productive. I've eaten Reese's Pieces, turkey sandwiches, and Special K Red Berries, but that doesn't make me happy. God help me, I miss Cameroon.

I was talking to Kelsey last night about this and she asked that, if I could, right now, get on a plane and fly to Bamenda right now, would I? Well, no, even though I miss it, I probably wouldn't, for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I am happy, in general, to be in America again, even though I'm not happy with the current state of my life.

It's a strange time and it's a difficult compound of circumstances: to have this whole other section of my life, which was my entire life for a very long time, just vanished, swept away, and I'm supposed to forget about it and move on. (Except, of course, when I wax nostalgic in interviews about why it profoundly changed me.) I can't. That's not how it is, and it's not a trivial thing. I know it's life, and life moves forward and you have to leave things and people behind, but it's hard. It's hard because it's real. Africa is not some far off place filled with lions and HIV and poor starving children with flies on their eyes. It's Carine, never looking any less than regal in her tailored dresses. It's knocking down breakfast off of my papaya tree each morning. It's the women who plunk one of their children onto my lap in a crowded bush taxi without asking permission. It's Hope-Mah learning how to roll over, and crawl, and walk in front of me, then one day saying for the first time, "Auntie Lindsay, ashia." It's all of these things and more. And readjustment is hard because I had a life filled with all of these little things, a life that I had carved out and made for myself in a place that was lacking so many creature comforts and now... I'm in the land of plenty, but I have no life. Not yet.

I've been meaning to make a list, and now is the appropriate time, I guess, while I'm thinking about my Africa. Here are some of the things I miss already about my home-away-from-home.


1.) Fufu corn and njama-njama.
2.) Carine and the Fon.
3.) Talking Pidgin. (And French sometimes.)
4.) Being a Mafor.

5.) Songs that the kids made up with my name in them.

6.) Lots of public transportation. (Miserable though it may be.)
7.) Colin.
8.) Climbing hills.
9.) Good cheap bakery bread. (Not to be confused with the square bread.) ... (Or with Pee Bread.)
10.) Feeling like I accomplished something after cleaning the house/washing my clothes because it took all day long.
11.) The Case.12.) Bargaining.
13.) Being okay with not doing a lot (by American standards) because I was still doing as much as I could.
14.) Not having internet, cable, hot water, a plush bed, phone service, a refrigerator, an oven, or whatever else in my house. ...Seriously, how can you truly appreciate anything if you always have everything?
15.) Looking forward so much to market every 8 days! 16.) Shopping for fresh foods then spending all afternoon making my dinner.
17.) Bootleg CDs/DVDs. (All y'all still over there, we can work out a package-exchange plan, if you'd like.)
18.) My preschool class.19.) All (okay, like 99%) of the women in my village.
20.) My village in general for that matter.
21.) My pretty house that I worked so hard on.
22.) Shortwave BBC and tea in the morning.
23.) Reading by bushlamp.
24.) Smol Smol No Be Sick.
25.) Adam fruit. (!!!)
26.) Cheap sangria in 2-Liter bottles.
27.) Making my excellent Not-Spinach-and-No-Artichoke dip.
28.) Sleepovers in Bafut. 29.) Kids coming to greet/playing in my yard/generally loving me just because.

30.) Getting soaked washing my dishes in the rain.
31.) The immense excitement of having a new TV show on DVD passed on to me.
32.) Having my iPod be the most expensive and precious thing I owned.
33.) Building relationships over text message. (i.e.- Gaining so much happiness out of no more than 240 characters at a time.)
34.) Hiking mountains to get to a place where I had enough service to send/receive text messages.
35.) Afternoon naps under my tin roof during rainy season.
36.) My deaf neighbor's dog, Pelle, who was the only dog I ever saw come running because she was happy to see me, instead of constantly cowering around people because she was beaten so much. (A week before I left post, someone poisoned Pelle and she died.)
37.) Khokki corn.
38.) Being independent.
39.) Constantly learning, growing, and feeling like my life and my outlook was shifting for the better.
40.) Little kids with cute hair, before they have to shave it all off to go to government school.
41.) Limbe. ...Specifically going to the beach in Batoke for the first time on each trip, trekking on a path through the bush down a steep grade, buying mangoes from the man that lived in a shanty on the way, to get to the place where the shore suddenly spreads out in front of us, and men nap in their hollowed-out fishing boats until it's time to pull them into the water again. Yeah, I miss Limbe. 42.) Titus the Tailor and his sometimes completely wrong creations.
43.) Living in Chacos and flip-flops.
44.) Poisson brassée and baton de manioc.
45.) Getting together with other stir-crazy volunteers and finally having a lose-your-breath laugh for the first time in 3 months.

(Starring Ingrid, Stacy, Lindsey, Jenny, and Justin. imu!!!)

46.) Pagne everywhere.47.) Loud, overbearing, blunt people. Mostly just because I could be loud, overbearing, and blunt without having to feel bad about it.
48.) Lizards chirping in my ceiling.
49.) Benskin rides.

50.) The pleasure of receiving packages.
51.) Awesome/insightful/ridiculous phrases painted all over anything with wheels.
52.) My girls, Wee-Mah and Hope-Mah, who never failed to make the most wretched day somehow bright again.