Almost heaven, Camp Tawonga
Sierra mountains, Tuolumne River
Life is old here, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
Camp Tawonga, California
Take me home down country roads...
Tonight I am rewriting it once again as I think about a difficult but exciting decision I recently made, one to leave Israel early and come home to Berkeley for a few weeks before setting out once again for the next leg of my adventure, further-flung than even I had dreamed when this year began.
Some say it's heaven--Jerusalem, Israel
Mount of Olives, Judean desert
Conflict is old here, older than the trees
But peace is coming, blowing like a breeze
British Airways, take me home
To the place I belong
Back to Berkeley, in California
From Tel Aviv to SFO
All the memories I have made here
Since October when I first came
Old and new friends, teaching English
Yummy falafel, Hebrew unfolding before my eyes
British Airways, take me home
To the place I belong
Back to Berkeley, in California
From Tel Aviv to SFO
I hear the voice, over Skype it calls to me
Telling me of a new chance to go teach far away
Riding on the 4-Alef bus I feel
My time here should be cut short a few days
Lufthansa, take me there
To the place I will go next
Starting in February, and until May
Lead me down that African road
Yes it is true, my placement with AJWS is coming through after all and I have the chance to go live and work at a Liberian refugee camp in the country of Ghana, on the western coast of Africa. I will be there from mid-February until the beginning of May training a group of teachers there to build there skills and improve their school. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the next place I will work to repair the world this year:
Buduburam is a refugee camp located 44 kilometers (27 miles) west of Accra, Ghana. Opened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1990, the camp is home to more than 35,000 refugees from Liberia who fled their country during the Liberian Civil War (1989–1996), and the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003). The camp is served by the UNHCR as well as Liberian and international NGO groups and volunteer organisations.
Finding out, after months of waiting to hear about anything definitive at all from AJWS, that I was not only going to Africa but also had a chance to do this work was incredibly exciting but also very daunting. Preparing to go would require everything from acquiring Ghanian travel documents from their consulate here in Israel to finding somewhere in Jerusalem to not only leave all the things I have here (wool sweaters, winter boots) that one does not need near the equator but to also buy things like more contact lenses and a mosquito net---all of which felt both complicated and overwhelming. And, what can I say? I left San Francisco in mid-June, it has been six and a half months since I set aside for now the life I knew and had worked overwhelmingly hard to both build and maintain. During these past weeks upon weeks I have done and seen and experienced and accomplished things I never thought possible. That said, however, life in Israel as in any foreign country is difficult at times. It took me an hour to do my grocery shopping, dictionary in hand, last week and after awhile it stops being fun to wonder, " Is it sour cream, or is it yogurt? Is it tomato paste, or spaghetti sauce?" The excitement wears off and you just want to go home and cook dinner, already.
So the combo platter of logistics and emotions led to my decision to take a break from this nomadic life for a short time. This choice was not without a healthy dose of reflecting--What does it mean about me as a traveler that I had planned to be gone from the States for eight and a half months but am now going back after not even four? What does it mean that out of weariness about checkpoints and bag searches and incomprehensibly expensive groceries that I am using my financial privilege to return to the States and chill out at Mark and Rebecca's for awhile and hopefully do some substitute teaching to make some money and definitely eat some sushi and burritos when 99% of the people I see every day, almost all of the Israelis I know, do not have the freedom to make that choice and instead are searched and questioned and financially strained everywhere they go, all the time?
In the end, I remembered what Mark said when I hugged him goodbye at the airport in Manchester the day I left for Israel..."It's okay if I want to come home, right?" I asked him. "Sarah--of course it's okay--you can do whatever you want." So that's it, I called and changed my ticket and interestingly have been having a much richer and more meaningful experience here in the days since then. I think part of what was hard to enjoy things in Israel--recently at least, since I got sick and had to go to the doctor by myself and spent most of Chanukah vacation in bed with a fever--was the seeming endlessness of it, not knowing about Africa, worrying about making enough money here the next months to support myself if I did decide to stay until May, thinking about what it would be like to be away from my community another five months. Now that I know I am going back every minute is precious here. So I have another two weeks in Israel, only a bit less than the total length of my very first trip here three years ago and then I'll be on my way back to San Francisco for Tu B'Shevat, for my birthday, for Bat Sheva's bat mitzvah, for time to relax and try to understand all I've seen and learned so far, for time with my friends.
British Airways, take me home...
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