Which continent, exactly?

This blog's title isn't in reference to actual continents (I've now been to four), but is rather drawn from "The Third and Final Continent," a stunning short story by Jhumpa Lahiri, from her collection, The Interpreter of Maladies. In particular, I'm inspired by the following quote that summarizes the attitude I try to carry with me through life and on my travels

I am not the only person to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

I love this. It calls on us to consider the tiny details of our experiences, both one-by-one, and in the aggregate, and to maintain a sense of wonder even about the seemingly mundane things that are the building blocks of our lives, and often, the glue that binds us to our traveling companions.

This blog began as a chronicle of my study abroad experience in Cairo in Spring 2008, and continued last year while volunteering in Geneva, and South Sudan with a wonderful organization, VIDES.

Now in graduate school, I'm returning to the Continent this summer while interning in New Delhi, India.

Please enjoy, inquire, and learn.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Signs I may have been here "too long"

  • The other day, after making what I was certain was terrible food for our watchmen, said "oh well, it is food and there are hungry children in.  . . . Oh wait" *cringe*
  • I am a constellation of mosquito bites and absurd tan lines. Farmer's tan combined with v-neck, additional demarcations at he elbow, ankle, knee, neck, watchband,  and of course, a pretty stunning flip flop tan
  • I have become reasonably successful at the challenging but rewarding one-handed midair mosquito grab of death 
  • After developing an aversion since the age of four, am starting to kind of like bananas.   Unto recently they were, along with Korean food, one of two foods I have actually tried and hated without good reason
  • <75 degrees has started to feel cold
  • I am developing a new lexicon and it hardly feels awkward anymore.   Peanuts are groundnuts, I "take" water, coffee, tea, etcetera, you "close" electrical outlets and stove burners, and the strong Salesian Italian influence has made mamma mia is my current exclamation of choice 
  • Half the words I use give me flashbacks of trying to explain it to my students
  •  I am definitely talking more slowly.  Still not enough that the students can easily understand me but better than when I left Americaland 
  • I am beginning to recognize the various Nigerian movie actors and throw roles they are inevitably typecast in
  •  Our oven is kinda difficult and here, where you don't throw away dishes that don't go as planned, I am starting to weirdly enjoy the taste of burnt cake

Cake that ended up resembling a map.  At the bottom right,
see Africa and what is either Eurasia, or an elephant
climbing Africa. 

1 comment:

Andrina Ong said...

i love flip flop tan lines :D