Some of you know this little tradition I have where, on the last day of a month, I come up with one adjective to describe that month. I’ve found it a great way to reflect and have closure. My adjective for July was blurry, mainly because July felt incredibly fast. Time has seemed to just slip through my fingers like sand. We woke up homeless on July 1st and now here we are, almost 5 weeks later, enjoying our final week of house-sitting in this beautiful home close to the center of town. Looking back, I tried to determine a concise way to explain how I spent my time. Usually I do this by assessing what I have done, what I have accomplished. So, what have I done? What have I accomplished?
Those are questions that I have been pondering both the meaning of and the answers to lately. This year I have been grappling with the notion of making the “most” out of time. For someone who is slightly obsessed with time like myself, the idea of making the “most” out of it can feel very daunting. I feel like this phrase gets thrown around haphazardly sometimes, which has forced me to think about it lately. This is why:
Upon my return to Malawi, my top goal (I wrote this down) was to “make the most of my time.” I had a loose definition in my head of what that meant; taking advantage of every opportunity, focus on something, help someone, move quickly, be efficient, etc. Well, I tried that. I feel like I have been trying that since I got to Malawi, and it has never really felt right, something has never really clicked. I have put so much pressure on myself to DO something, to have a concrete product, to have something to show and be proud of at the end of it all.
The truth is, this project is Andrew’s project; always has been, always will be. I am an assistant, and I thought I would be more ok with that than I have been. I guess it’s just a facet of my personality, but it is just not in my nature to not have my own thing. Don’t get me wrong- I am incredibly grateful to have been here for this process and I have learned so much from working on this project- about Malawi, about HIV/AIDS, about Andrew, about relationships, about myself. And the most important thing I have learned about myself (more like hit-me-in-the-gut kind of realization) is that:
WOAH KAITLIN YOU NEED SOMETHING THAT IS 100% YOU.
I am not ashamed to say this. I do not consider myself “The Girlfriend That Just Tagged Along.” Hell no. I know that I have contributed to the growth of this project and I do not regret coming here at all. How could I turn down the offer to live with my #1 Love in a foreign land doing a music project? So many of my passions rolled into one. Only a fool would have said no.
These past few months have been a MASSIVE learning experience for me, as well Andrew and for Grace. God bless Grace, who has talked with me for hours and really helped me wipe out the cobwebs and weed out the bullshit in my brain and take the time to think about what I, Kaitlin, really need to do. I have also talked about this a lot with Andrew, who has been so encouraging and understanding and has helped me see the value and necessity in “going back to the drawing board” in terms of figuring out what I want, as scary as that may be. I have been clinging to the notion of having this whole album being my life too for so long, and while it is a huge part of my life and while I am happy to be a supporting member of this team and a supportive special friend to Andrew, I gotta have my own thing!
So, why haven’t I just gone out and found that? Why haven’t I just started a women’s group or volunteered somewhere? It’s easy to say, “Oh, just go volunteer somewhere! You’re in Africa!” But being here this year has really made me think about the implications of things like that, and who’s fulfillment would I really be seeking- the people I would be “benefiting”, or my own?? The realities of the situation:
*I don’t speak Chichewa
*I am here for a pretty short amount of time
*If Andrew ever needed the car, he would of course take precedence because it is his car and we are here because of him! Making transportation problematic…
*As for specific skills, I know how to teach gymnastics, and I already do that once a week for little expat kids (for payment- gotta pay for groceries) and if I were to go to an orphanage to teach I feel like it would be a vain attempt to reclaim my glory days in Tanzania- which I don’t want
*Call me cynical, but a lot of places I would volunteer would probably care more about the fact that I am white and have money than the fact that I can “do” things.
I am aware that these could just be viewed as just excuses. That is fine if that is how you view them. But for me, all of these realities combined just left me thinking:
Just because I’m in Africa does not mean that I have “so much to offer.”
To me, this is the thing about volunteering here: unless you have a specific skill, you really won’t be doing much. Grace has her own niche because Grace possesses very specific and very useful skills at the maternity ward. Andrew has his own niche because has a specific project and specific skills and this is the place for him to do/utilize those. A friend of ours is in veterinary school in Canada and is here working with cattle in rural areas- specific! As for me, my “skills” may not be best utilized in a village, which has been a hard pill to swallow. I’ve had to realize that at this particular moment in my life, they may be best used here in our house; being patient and being a listening ear and a helping hand and what-have-you. Now, I’m NOT becoming a little housewife. No no no. What I am becoming is changed…. in this sense:
I have been forced to define what the “most” of time is, or what it means to accomplish something. So, during my honest assessment of what I have been doing/accomplishing the past few weeks, here is the truth:
Reading
Taking lots of photos
Laying in the sunshine in our backyard
Going on lots of runs and doing yoga
Eating very healthily
Cooking a lot, learning new recipes from Grace
Learning about birth from Grace and from her books
Laughing a lot with Andrew and Grace
Playing Bananagrams and card games
Finding a place to live in Carrboro via internet
Trying to find a job online for when I get home
Looking at grad school programs in international
education and art therapy
Emailing my friends
Journaling and making a bunch of Life Lists including:
What are my strength/weaknesses?
What do I mock?
What do I value?
What subjects do I want to know more about?
How can I be a better friend?
What do I expect from a friendship?
The hardest/best part about all of this is the process of realizing that, in a way, I have been accomplishing quite a lot. I always used to tell myself, “Man ,when I have the time, I’m going to write down what I believe in so that when I’m an old woman I can read it” or “Man, when I have the time, I am going to learn how to make banana bread” or “Man, when I have the time, I’m going to really work on being a better runner.”
Hello lightbulb:
I have the time. Right now. Just because I’m in Africa doesn’t make this time any less suitable to do those things- in fact in this case it is more suitable
Now, to be honest, a part of me still has a problem with this. Part of me is thinking, “Dammit Kaitlin, you didn’t come here to just lay in the sun and lavish in doing whatever you want and put yourself through your own version of therapy!” And that is correct- if I had known a year ago that I would be doing what I have been doing the past month, I probably would have turned up my nose at my future self and been like, “You are being selfish. You are wasting your time.” But that’s precisely it- I am not wasting my time. Things change. Things have changed so much in a year and I would be making myself miserable if I continued to put pressure on myself to “accomplish” something in the old sense of the word just for the sake of my ego and just because I am abroad. Kaitlin of 2009 would not have been able to see this.
A few weeks ago during a wonderful heart-talk, Andrew said, “Kaitlin, you need to do something crazy. You need to challenge yourself in a major way or you are going to be miserable.” That’s when I realized that, personally, the most challenging thing I could do here is to slow down and quit this silly competition with myself and take that time to write those lists, take that time to make that bread, take that time to learn life lessons and life skills! That is what is most important right now, not teaching gymnastics somewhere random so that, on paper, I would appear that made the “most” of my time.
To wrap up; I don’t care about what my CV says. I don’t care about what people might think when I honestly tell them what I “did” here when I get home. What I care about is that I have been given a wonderful opportunity here and, in my own way, I am learning how to take full advantage of it.
Time has made the most of me.
