I guess you're just what I needed.....

I continue to find it amazing and weird how if one is open to it, the universe will always provide what one needs, even if sometimes we are too dense to realize it at the time. As my time in Botswana comes to a bit of an unanticipated close (sooner than I expected, see most entries below) many of the dynamics of the friends I’ve made here have become strained in some ways. I think it’s natural that as “goodbye, possibly forever” approaches that there is a little stress involved, and it can get to be a nasty thing to deal with.

Many of my Peace Corps friends are dealing with their own burned out, ready to be done, not knowing what’s next or knowing what’s next and it’s hectic emotions or any range /combination of these feelings. Many of my researcher friends are dealing with finishing up their research and heading off to write, and my expats are dealing with another whole crop of temporary people leaving. The villagers are realizing I’m going and that they’ll probably never see me again. None of us know if I’m going to be replaced which is another dynamic in itself.

The Peace Corps volunteers that are leaving are like black holes hurtling through the universe, we are sucking the energy out of anything that passes by us. We’re exhausted, tired, and we stare at things a lot. We’re about to go through reverse culture shock, and when we get together it can often be like a supernova of moaning, low level hysterics, random tears and unsolicited anger, fear, or jubilation, at completely unpredictable intervals. We are unbalanced ions looking for the matching atom that can catalyze us out of this particular situation, and in the absence of that, we just bounce against each other in chaos.

Granted, it’s nice to not be going through all of this alone and there is obviously some comfort in knowing that other people feel just the way you do at this moment in time. There’s always someone to call and know that yes, they will understand you. And yes, being a friend entails being there for one another. But as this journey we’ve been on together comes to a close, we face a new challenge, and that is not one of being physically isolated from members of our own culture and alone anymore, as most of us have become pros at spending huge amounts of time as the only American in many kilometers. But we always know that when we do get to see each other, we know that the others are going through a similar experience. The challenge ahead is going to be a new one that each of us will be going through completely alone, that of being surrounded by Americans full time and knowing that few of them get what you’ve gone through. Reentering the atmosphere to find you don’t immediately recognize your own planet anymore.

Which in the end is ok. We’ll move on from this experience, readjust and be fine. But right now most of us are in the thick of it, experiencing a whirlwind of emotions and under a great deal of stress, either about our own or each other’s impending departure. This doesn’t lead to being the greatest of friends. Lately I’ve noticed us speaking to each other with more sharpness, or at times I’ll look over at a friend who is looking away with tears in her eyes.

Not that my friends are doing anything wrong. They, like me, are just living their experience. We are on one hell of an emotional rollercoaster. I know that I myself am currently no cup of tea to deal with. It’s to be expected, but it’s just hard. Sometimes you have to come to the conclusion that the friends that you have, and that are like a warm sweater or your favorite pair of jeans just aren’t the ones you need to wear ALL THE TIME. You might need to add a new item you’re your wardrobe of battle gear, one that serves to cover and protect an area of vulnerability you may not have known you had.

I remember when my friend Johanna was leaving for the Peace Corps three years ago. We had only met in about February, and I ended up being the one to drive her to the airport in June. We developed a close and fast friendship, one based in the knowledge that we would both be leaving each other for a long time, and that we wouldn’t be the sort of friends that are based in seeing each other all the time to meet for tea. I was sad that she was leaving as I liked her a great deal, but it was also comforting to watch someone go through what I myself would be going through in the next year. I would miss her in the immediate in my everyday life, but I wasn’t so used to her as being part of the fabric of my day to day clothes that I resolutely needed her for warmth. Johanna was like my ball gown, or my go-to little black dress, the perfect thing to find in your closet that makes you smile, and goes with everything.

I think that in her end of days before the Peace Corps I filled a certain role for Jo, I was someone who could quietly witness her experience without getting overly wrapped up in the emotional tug of war that went on as she prepared for her journey. Because I didn’t’ really know her “prethisbigthing”, I could just jump into her circus and play with the tigers with her without many questions or judgment. She gave me a map of how to move from one world to another, and in the year after she left, I followed it. During those last few days before she left for Georgia, she defined the parameters of her universe and I was lucky enough to be in the orbit.

Our friendship has grown over time and distance, and I’m looking very forward to seeing her and catching up on the past three years when I meet up with her in Scotland. She also had an abrupt end to her intended service, and having served in the Peace Corps herself there are just so many things that she “gets” without lengthy explanations. And yet her experience in Eastern Europe was undoubtedly different to one in sub-Saharan Africa, thus in being with her will hopefully move me a bit past this whole “Botswana is the center of the universe” thing I’ve been sucked into for the past few years. I mean it’s true, development and HIV and Batswana culture have pretty much been my life for a while, but I need to shake myself out of that mind frame a little, as I have a feeling not many people in America are going to be able to (or want to) listen to me ramble at length about these topics, which are never going to be the center of anyone else’s universe.

Enter Clara. It seems in the waxing hours of my time in Botswana that I’ve found another one of these versatile friends who came along just when I needed her. I actually met her in August at HOORC (Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Center) while I was pirating internet and waiting for a friend to finish with a meeting. It was like her second day in Bots and one of her advisors was introducing her around. As they passed me, he stopped, and despite not ever having seen me before in my life, began introducing Clara to me. As I began to speak his face lit up and he said “oh excellent, you ARE American, so is Clara.” She shyly shook my hand and we established that she was researching birds. I tried to explain that I wasn’t actually based in Maun, and didn’t know how great of a contact I would be, but I would try to introduce her around. As an extremely loud person, her quietness made me a little nervous, but we exchanged numbers and email addresses. I put her in touch with some of my friends in Maun, and didn’t see her much after that, as my work was really getting under way in Seronga, my family came to visit, ect.

As my service has continued on in Seronga, I have to admit that burn out has taken over quite a few aspects of my life. Over time I’ve gone from being the Seronga welcome wagon, hosting strangers and going out of my way to meet people and help them, to somewhat of a strange hermit. It’s not that I don’t want to meet new people; it’s more that I’m just tired. I’m tired of the energy required to give it the old Jen Katchmark “Heyya!” It’s been a struggle to fight against the limited communications with the outside world (read: The States) and I’ll be the first to admit that my efforts have slipped in the last half of my service. In the priority list of my life, new people have just fallen to the wayside. I know this isn’t good, and I’ve probably missed out on opportunities to have some really great relationships with some nice people. But I know a little part of me doesn’t want to take on the emotional work of getting to know new people, only to turn around and miss them and mourn them when I leave. It’s happened with the new houseboats people and the new Nigerian doctor and his wife. They’re right here in Seronga, and they’re really nice and friendly and keep inviting me over, but honestly, I just don’t have it in me. I’m running out of energy to give to new relationships, so I guess I’ve chosen to not really engage in them at all.

But I guess Clara made it in under the deadline. Because although I didn’t know it at the time, she needed to. From the time we met in August, Clara and I became the type of friends who would greet each other in passing (as is the custom of anyone in Southern Africa) and became familiar enough acquaintances that we didn’t have to put down a lot of the “new friend” groundwork. I seriously don’t know what changed about our intersecting social circles but suddenly we were seeing each other all the time. And shy little Clara reentered my life like a storm. I’m not even sure how exactly it happened, but all of a sudden Clara was on my constant texting list and we were always making plans that included each other. We went from nodding to each other in greeting to finishing each other’s sentences.

She’s come up to visit me in Seronga, and I’ve stayed with her in Maun. We talk a lot about our different experiences here, her having come on her own as part of her Fulbright scholarship and studying birds and not people. And yet there are some things about the expatriate life that are just constant and bond you together if you are one. She’s fresh and new in her excitement for her work, and her being American means that there aren’t the same sort of cross cultural struggles that can make making new friends under these conditions a pain in the ass.

It’s such a nice change to listen to her talk about her work (which is neither development or piloting nor tourism work, which seems to be the only other options of things people do here beside animal research) and her passion has reignited some of mine. With her I can talk about my feelings about leaving and the uncertainty of what’s next without it being the emotional mine field it often becomes with my other friends. Sure she’ll miss me, and I her, but we’re also both quite used to an existence unlinked to each other.

Not to say that it will continue that way. We’re already planning a road trip across the motherland at the end of summer (finances permitting). She’ll leave Botswana in August, and she also doesn’t exactly know what’s next.

I just feel so happy, and so lucky that the universe decided to bless me by giving me Clara (especially with all the cursing it I was doing when I first arrived in Seronga) and that my heart was open enough to invite her in. She came along when I thought my borders were closed to new visitors, and she turned out to be just what I needed.








Top: Clara and I at the animal party 2010
Bottom: Johanna and I before she left, 2007

“We are incomplete creatures. We cannot live alone; we cannot find our own meaning alone. We realize our potential, we become alive, only when we find ‘between.’”-Jonathan Haidt