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         I love the feeling of powerful ocean waves surging over my body. Of planting my feet, decisively, in shifting ground, only to be blasted down by the sea and shore’s crashing reunion. To be prostrate in the frothy surf afterwards, feeling no stronger than the grains of sand swirling around my soaked mass. I like to imagine where the particles on this Ghanaian beach may have come from, trending towards the lovely (Maine islands, Sahara dunes, etc.), minding the gnarly (Lagos waste water, Pacific garbage gyre, etc.), and averaging the aforementioned’s mélange somewhere in the middle. I admire the sand’s ability to rest on any shore, regardless of grime, and roll into any wave, irrespective of its fury. On my best days, I’m channeling sand.

        I envisioned integration as becoming a local in Mango. In my mind, it would be like shedding my American skin and being reborn Togolese; feeling as at home fetching water and working on the farm as I ever did taking hot showers and working in a theatre. There would be moments when everyone, including myself, forgot my recent arrival. Having served over nineteen months, I haven’t experienced that calm. And, in my service’s balance, I’m not going to. And, I’m glad. I’m glad there are waves of rude locals to harass me, of African languages to drown out my best French, and of American memory induced despondency to batter my best attempts at fitting in. Because I’m not Togolese or a native French speaker or heterosexual or any of the other things I dreamed of pretending to be. I am who I am, even here, and existing outside my culture can never mean entirely existing outside of myself. I can be culturally sensitive and appropriate, I can try to understand things that would have once wrecked me, I can become a more adaptable and empathetic person. But there are aspects of my life that I can’t reconcile with here, and there’s nothing wrong with myself, Togo, or the Peace Corps as a result. Learning about Mango, shopping in our open markets, and spending time with my host family: I can be contently incomplete through everything. I can be the odd, rocky grain on our beach, blending the best it can and resting through the crashes and time between. Some days savoring it all, others waiting to wash up elsewhere. Another shore, another integration.

Connection

I want a transcendent connection. I want someone to remember me so fondly, one moment was long enough to send them searching for more. Maybe I’ll be the person beside them on a spin bike, with calves toned to kill. Or the man that dirty danced just long enough to drive them wild. Perhaps I’ll smile at the grocery and that image will linger long after they’ve checked out. I imagine someone searching, just as I’m waiting to be found.

        What happens if I miss the moment though? The one that was somehow, perhaps incontrovertibly, ours. Will you move on to someone else? Are there other sidewalk muses waiting to excite you? You’re a fairly attractive man, with what seemed like an affable demeanor and brilliant eyes in the seconds that I knew you. Unless, that is, you’ve changed since then. Change, you know: the buzzword of our hyperlocal, globalized world. We’re all either changing too much, or not enough. Not enough to remain competitive anyway, for strangers in passing linger but one day, if that, before distraction leads us away. I’m the same way, short attention span and shorter expiration date, so I want to be remembered in an immediate sense. Putting me further in the past would make my person better or worse than I am through hindsight. The present is where what we shared matters. It’s where we belong.

        The next time you saluer from the champ or comment on my hair at McDonalds, stop. Drop everything else and we’ll build a life together, extending this present as long as we can. We’ll have amazing sex, the kind where your bodies fit together perfectly and every insecurity only makes the other person more real and that much more lovable. We can talk about all the other connections that came first; the ones that weren’t built to last, that didn’t transcend our bourgeois ballet. The distractions will fade to reveal how things where we are, in that moment, are perfect. There’s no one else to miss, so hold onto me now, not in passing. 

Fade

        Our center in Pagala is equal parts faded dormitory complex and spunky seminar site. Apparently built to house German industrial workers in the 70’s, today the repainted off-white structures, empty coffin-shaped pool, and hexagonal meeting huts stand in brilliantly withered contrast to both modernity and the Togolese village outside it. Frozen between cultures and times on a forested riverbank, the center has a distinctive charm that invites ambling daydreams and reflection. Volunteers typically come to Pagala three times for official trainings, plus most national camps, and it can be both a respite from and reminder of everything they hope to, have, or will not accomplish during their service. My last time there, as I walked the grounds under an intermittently overcast sky, memories drifted like the clouds overhead.

I recall my first time here, cast as a fresh – faced optimist searching for the difference he could make. Friends catching up after too much time apart. Review sessions about Moringa’s nutritional benefits, food transformation, and environmental education lasting throughout the day. Sharing meals and conversations across large tables in the dining hall. How’s your village? What would we like to accomplish in Togo? How are the older volunteers treating you? Where are we going tonight? I apparently danced with a Togolese man our final night at the local bar, Chez Plaisir, but I don’t remember that or anything after my fifth beer. I woke up in vomit and the vans took us home too early for my hangover’s taste.

The second training was with our Togolese work partners and, though largely a nice, interesting group, their presence made the event less English holiday, more awkward French symposium. The gulf between my then partner and I had been growing, he’s a friendly though self-interested man, and the training exacerbated our issues together. It felt like the others were passing me in some regards, but I vowed to press on with more than a year left. We hit Plaisir for our final blowout, dancing to whatever American pop we could find, and I thankfully enjoyed the evening in moderation.

Our last large event was near our service’s anniversary and served as a meditation on the one - year mark and plan for the future. We’d been told to bring something to present a successful project, so I used chalk on poster paper to make a neon, comic-esque illustration of what I’d done and my hopes moving forward. I perceived greater success around that room and felt maladjusted. Some visitors came to the displays and spoke to us; few of them stayed long with me and mine.

Dried teak tree leaves crunch under my feet as a decrepit hut seems inviting. Observing the sky through its vacant frame, I begged the clouds to rest and burst, to flood, to wash me and my flaws, or weakness or unshakable lows, away. When they answered, I lingered in the mud’s fresh scent and the erosion of Earth and identity. I won’t be at the center again, but the time I was meant something. To me, at least.

Mantra

         Today, I called friends in the morning to chat and figure out work logistics. Everyone said I sounded more productive and happier, that they were proud of me for keeping on. I remember smiling, feeling glad that my better mood, a recently risen phoenix from discontent’s ashes, flew across the airwaves.  Doing different odds and ends around the house lasted until almost noon, and then I went to the market. There, the usual ladies sat by their shaded stands in the courtyard, gossiping and selling an unusually large array of produce. Any day with carrots, cabbage, AND lettuce is a treat. Best I could tell, everyone around the town center sported their usual temperaments, ranging from apathy to lethargic contentment. Kids emphatically screamed “yovo” and “batuli”, local words for white people, as I strolled back down the sandy thoroughfare banked by trash. I ignored them the best I could. Coming home was a relief after dealing with the sun and stress outside our compound, and I sat first, to collect my thoughts. My cat, Kitty, was crazy hungry for fish, hissing and lunging at the bag as I held it. Her contrite post - lunch affection smoothed things out as per usual. I tried to nap around 2pm, fan directed and clothes off, but cried instead. Lying somewhere between a sorrow and a sob.  

Tears came for the times I’ve been embarrassed, harassed, and laughed at in Togo for things I couldn’t control, and how they stung so similar to past American pains. I cried for feeling glad to be leaving soon when many people here would if they only could. For wishing that I were somewhere else, but for knowing that I’ll miss this place once I’ve gone. Too many days feel like today, and soon, revisionist sadly, none will feel like them again. Tears came for not knowing what to do with what I’ve got, and not knowing what I’ve got until it’s gone.

My unfocused shave went well, and I’m trying a new rockabilly-esque set of chops on for size. My salad was delicious, a bowl of fresh veggies rarely disappoints, and I tried adding celery salt to the dressing I prepared. Yum. The shower was surprisingly warm and washing my hair felt like heaven after several dusty taxi rides recently. In bed again, I thought of my knitting instructor from college. Adelaide was a ninety-something New England firecracker of a lady, compact and razor sharp in moxie and vitality.  One day, I visited her quaint place for a knit. My boyfriend had recently left me and lies leapt to mouth whenever someone asked how I was. “Things are fine.” “Life’s busy and coming along.” “Everything’s looking up.”  With a brief searching glance, she saw through the façade. “It’s okay not to be okay dear. If you’re unhappy, it’s better to say so and get it out. Time will make things better and you’ll turn it around, acknowledge that too. Everyone should accept, ‘I’m not okay, but I will be.’ ”

Another day’s done. I’m not okay, but I will be.

3am

        It’s ungodly early and I’m up to pee. Harmattan is in full effect; grasses are rustling in the Sahara winds outside and the floor is covered in a reddish-brown layer of dust. Given the season’s drift through the continent, the particles clinging to my cracked skin could have originated far away. Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Places I’d like to see someday. Places I’d rather be, I think (though only for a moment this time). I finish my business and walk to the sink; ants race across the dusty porcelain basin from the wall to the drain and back again. I start crushing their tiny bodies beneath my fingertips, like an errant God, and realize how similar we are niche wise. Organisms selfishly racing around, productively trying to serve their own ends and always consuming (in another man’s paradise).  I turn on the faucet and wash their tiny corpses, and my meditation on them, down. The cool water on my hands feels colder in the night’s dark, lively air; I step into my room feeling chilled and alone. I think of the snow and how frigid it must be at home, how I’ve missed the winter for so long and may not know what to do with it anymore. As if the scarves and socks and jackets I’ve stowed away could never keep me warm again. Fantasy scenes that have kept me afloat on darker days, biking bright Seattle streets, meeting a lover at an independent theatre, reading in Central Park, return real and melancholy: rain floods the pavement, money’s too tight for tickets, lovers and free time are gone. I move my dusty green mosquito net and climb into bed, life’s relentless gravity, whether here or abroad, pressing me into peace symbol sheets. Not quite crushed, like an insect as enormous forces bear down. And then, I’m asleep, my running thoughts escaping into memory.

Autumn Again

        
        I’ve been searching for autumn since last year, when I missed my first in Togo. There are local seasons, largely variations on a hot / dry theme, but the difference temperature wise is typically negligible. As a result, our shifts in color and life are predicated on rainfall: green and lush when it’s plentiful, brown and dead while its gone. That my region’s rain patterns end when summer begets autumn at home has proved some comfort, with certain trees shedding their leaves just as the leaf peeper’s New England images light up the Internet. No local trees seem to don any vibrant reds or oranges before disrobing, there might be one shade of yellow then gone, but having the falling foliage blow past me feels right. That an autumnal crunching sometimes sounds my footfalls, gives walking an aural pleasure I've sincerely missed. Like an arranged marriage over the years, I’m learning to love our local autumn and see home in its sunlit fields and sandy markets. There are always leaves drifting around recently though, reminding me of another life I’ll see again someday.  

Leaning Forward

        

        I'm on a motorcycle cruising home, as I often am when the weekend ends and four dollars is a small price to avoid a cramped bush taxi. Passing through Bomboaka, where colonial era Kapokie trees line the dusty national route, I get lost. Instead of Africa, I’m on campus during a gorgeous Montana spring, riding my bike across cobblestones to the day’s first period. Next, I’m cruising around Lake Harriet on a rented, fluorescent green bike, hoping to catch the Minneapolis summer before it slips away. Finally, and most lucidly, I’m on a similar moto in Thailand, cruising through Chiang Mai’s busy streets with a gentleman I met the night prior. I’m holding onto his waste and resting my head against his shoulder, hoping that we never make it to the theater and spoil the perfect journey. The Kapokie’s shade ends and I’m back in Africa, enshrouded in dust under a cloudless sky, surprised at how completely the memories took me over. I’m leaning forward such that, whenever we hit a bump or turn, my chest grazes his back. Moments of us connecting on a silent, sun-baked ride.