Back in the U.S...A.! The past week has entailed a ton of moving around: Nairobi -> Accra -> Washington D.C. -> Columbus, Ohio -> Danville, Kentucky -> Nashville, Tennessee -> Bloomington, Indiana. And now I'm at school, mostly unpacked and organized back in my house and with two days of class under my belt.
The journey home was fine but long. Apart from a boring and annoying eleven hour layover at the Accra airport things went pretty smoothly. Apparently the Accra airport isn't properly designed for layovers--when I disembarked from the plane I was met by airport staff yelling, "transfers! transfers!" I followed them straight through immigration. There I argued with an officer about paying for a visa. You need to buy a visa if you're leaving the airport. I wasn't. However, to get to the departures area you have to leave the arrivals building and cross the street. Therefore, the guy was trying to make me pay. A nice Kenyan lady who was also transferring and I argued with him about my case. We won. And then I had to sit in the departures lobby (which had almost nothing) for ten hours. When I went through security again I got in another argument with an officer, this time about my hair scissors. I measured them; they're within regulation size and this was confirmed by officers in both Columbus and Brussels who also measured them. However, this time I lost. The officer refused to measure them so bye, scissors. But toward the end of my long sit I met a girl who had spent a couple of weeks volunteering in Ghana and we chatted for awhile, so that helped.
The flight to D.C. was long and we got in just before 6am last Tuesday, 23 August and they opened customs for us. All of that was fine and my new airport friend suggested we get breakfast. We went to Starbucks and I got a fancy pants frappuccino and we split a chocolate chip cookie and it was so, so, so delicious. I don't think Starbucks has ever tasted that good to me! I missed a lot of the food from the States! After my quick flight to Columbus my family accompanied me to the North Market and I continued to gorge: Greek food and Jeni's ice cream!
I spent a couple of days in Danville, hanging out with my family and catching up with a couple of friends. And then I spent a couple of days in Nashville, seeing Ben and his new place (and eating more tasty foods that I missed, including more Jeni's). On Sunday I drove back to Bloomington, arriving the day before class.
Things have been good here so far. There has been no rough adjustment at least yet and my classes (Sustainable Development, Energy Analysis and Markets, Law and Public Affairs, African Political Economy) are so far, so good. In fact, I may even have an additional job here, we shall see.
Now that I'm back and settled it's strange to think that just a bit over a week ago I was still in Kenya. It's certainly a lot different from my life here, which I suppose helps it feel pretty removed from my "normal life." I guess it's also good not to let that illusion completely take hold though, because I know I experienced a lot and learned important things over the summer and I don't want to forget them. I don't think I will, though I also think there are also things I need to make sense of and I at least hope to gain a better understanding of what I saw. Maybe my African Political Economy course will help with that, haha. The first class of that is tomorrow evening!
And so ends my summer of leah na twiga. Now that I'm back and can access youtube, I will end on this note (heh!):
No comments:
Post a Comment