Today

Despite living twenty-one million and thirty-three miles away from home (Google Maps wouldn’t divulge the actual number so I might be off by a couple of scores), I don’t always feel like I’m that far from the folks and the motherland.  This isn’t 1962, 1992, or even 2002.  Peace Corps Volunteers are no longer dropped off in the middle of villages, given motorbikes, told essentially “good luck and see you in two years” by administrators, and hope that their letters reach home within a year’s time.  Times have a changed – at least in some aspects.   In the last few years and even in the year since I have been in country, the spread of the internet has been pretty astonishing – cyber cafes, wireless keys, undersea fiber-optic cables!  Widespread availability, opportunity, and speed aren't exactly there yet, but just give it a little more time.  (Some days, I feel like training people to use Google with its endless supply of solutions right there for the fingertips’ reaping should be a volunteer’s real priority).  I live in a small city so as long as there is power, I could pay for the internet everyday if I wanted.  And, I would wager to say at least sixty percent of volunteers in Cameroon have weekly access as well.  Sure, there are still plenty of volunteers who live daily without power, water, phone, or internet (or some fun combination of those) in Cameroon and in many other countries, but thanks to the technology nerds, there isn’t quite the same disconnect between work and home as there once was.  Nowadays, volunteers, like the rest of the world, get to better keep up with family and friends through the magic of email, Facebook, blogs, and all those other necessary social network tools (while also helping to add to that never-ending, keyboard-created poopy-pile of unneeded shared thoughts that ends up in the interweb's non-coverable burial grounds - wherever they may lie). 

As soon as I left the U.S., all of my family decided to hurry and have babies while I was gone.  I think they feared I might drop one.  I wouldn’t have. Well, I don’t think I would have.  My best friends from college decided to become adults and do things like buy homes, get married, and become doctors and deliver hundreds of babies.  One of my little sisters moved on to high school, and the dog got a new best friend.  Why didn’t anyone tell me that life back home wasn’t going to pause for me??  (Maybe they did and I forgot to listen.)  All to say, I know I am lucky to have use of the modern communication tools -- it helps with the homesickness.  It's the one who lets me know that I am missing out and then helps me deal with those consequential feelings of missing out (making for an unhealthy and twisted relationship). 

But for the moment, as I sit here listening to Raffi and finger squishing the cotton weevils that are living in my mattress, and on the day that Katrina hit New Orleans seven years ago and as Isaac takes his time evilly calculating and circulating over my family, I feel the disconnect -- antsy and useless.  And, like after a week at summer camp, I miss home.  I know that today, especially, I am the fortunate one to be out of a hurricane’s reach, but I can’t say that right now I wouldn't rather be sitting without electricity in a forced and stressful holiday among family and friends playing cards, drinking beer, porch watching the wind and rain, and soon cleaning up the damage.