Stateside thoughts...

Our flight home was LONG, but thankfully uneventful this time. I did not pass out in the aisle this time - low flight drama. The highlight of our reentry was getting my African drum through customs. Mom and Bill picked us up from the airport and took us to lunch on the way home. It was good to have some fish! We didn't eat meat the whole time we were gone - check out the picture below - Malawi's high meat packaging standards... yummy. We went to Books a Million to get some coffee (Brett's second within 3 hours of landing in the US). We felt shell shocked as we roamed around the store - so many choices and THINGS.

Our friends and family outdid themselves in welcoming us home. We had warm, homemade muffins, delicious complete dinners in the fridge, freshly roasted Bald Guy Coffee (I think Brett drank it 4 different times that first day back!), spoiled and happy dogs, and tons of calls, texts, visits, and hugs. It was really hard to leave Malawi, but our excitement about seeing our loved ones helped motivate us.

It was interesting to get use to being in such a minority as white people. I didn’t really notice how use to it I was until I saw some other white people in town that last week. I was shocked and couldn’t take my eyes off of them. They stood out so much in a sea of brown faces. I know that’s how we looked to others. I have really noticed the difference since being back. Everything is white – the people, signs, posters, everything. I miss the color! It has made me keenly aware of how minorities must feel in our white dominated advertising.

Our transition has been difficult. We really nitched into our life in Malawi in a short time. We so enjoyed the laid back lifestyle and the relational verses task orientation of the culture. It has been hard to come home to the pressures and pace of our life (and the catch to life we now face) with the goal of bringing those values with us.

I am so thankful that Brett and I went on this journey together. It has been wonderful to be able to remember people, places, and stories with each other, and to share in frustrations, joys, and sadness. It helps to know he feels it all too. Two of the volunteers on the trip made an incredible video of our trip and we have watched it often since our return. The first time we watched it was the 3^rd day home. We both had tears in our eyes that the other could so easily understand. Love, love, love that man.
Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuYmbAK85Fo

It was also so awesome to know so many people were supporting us on this experience – with financial backing, time off work, covering our work, phone calls, emails, asking our parents about us, reading this blog, thoughts, prayers – all of it. It made the experience more meaningful knowing we were never alone.

We both feel that we have been “bitten” by Malawi. We drove ourselves crazy for the first part of the trip trying to figure out what that meant and how it might manifest in our lives. Are we suppose to host students, adopt children, work with World Camp or another non-profit to further effect change, expose people at home to the lessons we’ve learned…. I think we wanted to come up with some concrete ideas so to ease our fears about loosing whatever was changing us once we came home. But we knew that we would have to come home and process the experience to begin to know what this bite from Malawi is all about. I finally got some peace through an activity we did in one of our reflection sessions. One of the other coordinators, Katy led this wonderful activity; we wrote letters to ourselves to be read in 6 months. These letters will be mailed to us in July of this year. I used this opportunity to write a ton of snippets to capture life there to remind me to not forget that bite. As I was writing a metaphor came to me that helped me let go of the festering over a concrete understanding of our purpose. I told myself that Malawi gave us an important seed that promises to be meaningful and necessary for our lives. We can not yet know what kind of plant will grow from this seed, but we are still charged with fostering its growth with the intensity that would come from the African sun and rain. So, all of that to realize that our work is the process of growth – duh, Catherine.