The Long Road Home

From 28 Aug

Inside Looking Out

I closed the door to life in Iringa and East Africa for this summer at 9:45am Monday morning. I bid farewell to friends in Tungamalenga on Sunday morning, had others over for coffee and tea Sunday night, and bid my final farewell to others that morning before catching the Scandinavia bus to Dar es Salaam.

After a pick-pocket free 24 hours in Dar I caught a 6pm on a twin-propeller plane from Dar to Kilimanjaro and on to Nairobi. From there KLM ushered me in Dutch luxury to Amsterdam and on to JFK. In zombie travel mode I entered America via airport train from JFK to Jamaica Station in Queens (just down the street from the Salvation Army building I stayed in with the SOTV trip to NYC a mere 2 years ago). From there it was Subway via the E-train to the Number 6 to Grand Central where the Metro North carried me back to the Haven. A short trip on the Yale Shuttle finally left me exhausted on the doorstep of my apartment building.

While my body is on this continent, my brain is somewhere over the Atlantic and, for all intents and purposes, my heart is still in East Africa. There is something about me and that place that, for lack of a better phrase, just ‘clicks.’ I can’t explain why or how . . . that is just the way it is.

When I set out from my doorstep three months ago my goal was to test out long-term living overseas. It was a chance to see if I could one day walk the talk that I’ve been spouting for the past year or two. The result? I can’t imagine not going back again, for a longer time. I’m increasingly confident that I’m on the right track, that my interest in the Global Church –and East Africa in specific- isn’t just a fanciful dream or wild goose chase, that this all might be leading somewhere.

The how and the where of that ‘somewhere’ are yet to be determined . . . they are the journey that is to come. For now, what I need is rest . . . time to enjoy where I’ve been and where I am.