I'm currently in a Dar Es Salaam cafe ordering a sandwich and a cappuccino which will cost me about $6; that's more than my weekly food budget in the village. I'm trying really hard to think about my departures from the village, my school, Iringa region and the country, but as much as I try thinking about it, I don't feel anything. I don't feel sad or upset or guilty or anything that I would expect to be feeling. I should feel like I'm abandoning my students in the middle of the year. I should feel like I haven't done enough for the school as a whole. I should feel sad to see the simple life I have grown to love coming to an end. But I don't. If anything, I feel excited. And that's the worst. Close friends I've made here trying to say goodbye knowing they will likely never see their American friend again, and I'm over here smiling like an incensitive ass hole thinking about reuniting with my family and friends back home, salivating over pictures of fast food and craft beers, fantasizing about driving a car again..
I want to force myself to feel bad or sad or something more negative than I do, but that doesn't make sense either. Forcing it might even be worse. Like an unnatural pity feeling only shown to falsely validate the feelings of those around me. So I'm stuck here between the village and the states feeling nothing.
It makes me wonder if these feelings of loss or guilt or sadness will ever hit me. Maybe they'll catch up to me in the states inexplicably at a restaurant when I hear an ad on the radio for tanzanite jewelry. Or will it be in a movie theater when the hero amazes the audience with a phrase in swahili that only I will understand while he's on a top secret mission in East Africa. What if it doesn't catch up to me? Would that be better or worse? If I don't ever feel it, what does that say about me?
I guess I'll just eat my sandwich and let time tell.
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