Arrival in Africa

As promised, it's time to flip between memories and the present. We arrived in Africa after being in the air for about 18 hours. I was pretty exhausted, having met my second cousin Anna-Lena in the airport in Frankfurt and not having slept much either in Philadelphia (where we had two days of paperwork prep for South Africa) and the wait in JFK was horrendous (Can you believe there is no way to send a package from JFK? You can only send letters, which means I had to send my sister her car keys from Germany)

I had dreaded leaving for Peace Corps, I was excited about the job, but really dreaded leaving. My Grandmother had just passed away, I hadn't really had time to grieve with family and saying goodbye to friends and family, especially Julie, was excruciating. I knew it was best, but the realization of the length of time was not something I looked forward to. The morning I left, everything was in a fog, all I really did was put one foot in front of the other, my vision was blurry pretty much the moment I stepped out of the car. It didn't really stop being blurry until well into the flight to Philly, probably when I started sleeping.

Needless to say, the next few days were a mixture of emotions. It was great meeting new people, but I was more concerned about what was happening in Houston than with what was going to happen for the coming months. Probably not the best way to start a new job, but there wasn't any way I could not be concerned. So it was in that state that I landed on African soil. Emotionally drained, tired, kind of in survivor mode more than new job mode.

But we (all 90 or so of us) loaded ourselves and our luggage (90 people packing for two years is a lot of luggage) and headed off to our orientation center, better known as Mankwe. After leaving the airport there were definite signs we were in Africa, a troop (I think that's the right word) of monkeys scampering through the veld, billboards with South Africanized English, etc.

As we pulled into the training center the people soon to be known as our LCFs (language and Culutre Facilitators) sang a song of greeting. Zebras were just on the other side of the fence, the ubiquitous red dust was beginning to creep into our belongings and I was headed for bed.

Note: I didn't take this picture, someone else did... but I was still there.