Home

Well, I've safely made it back to the United States. It was an exhausting, stressful and long journey to get here, including a 24 hour unplanned layover in Nairobi and a 20 hour layover in London - all because our first flight from Zanzibar to Nairobi was delayed four hours because the air conditioner in the cabin wasn't working in our plane. The 24 hour layover in Nairobi felt like it lasted for days, mainly because we spent the whole of it in front of the Transfer Services desk or in the Transfer restaurant trying to rearrange our flights and our missed connecting flights. The feeling when we finally landed in London and then LA was euphoric.

Being back. There are so many different emotions that being home evokes.

Of course, happiness. Three months is the longest I've been away from home, and the challenges we faced in Marurani made the second half of the program feel even longer. Being able to walk around outside and blend into the crowd without people yelling mzungu! or byeeee! at me every five seconds, not having to worry about ordering salads in restaurants, no more starch in my diet!, the freedom to sleep without the constriction of a mosquito net and not having to battle the frogs and cockroaches for my showers and bathroom runs is a wonderful feeling. The comforts and conveniences of home are something I'll never ever take for granted. Plus, it's nice to slide into the warm comfortable relationships of my family and friends again.

Disbelief that the time has gone by so quickly. My "adventures in Africa" are over and now I get to return to my life, return to vet school interviews and Winter Quarter at UC Davis and a real job. Living in another culture and seeing a completely different way of life was an experience. Walking around a supermarket or a shopping mall stands in sharp contrast to walking down a long dirt road in the village, or even walking through the streets in Arusha. I wouldn't say I am a completely different person, three months wasn't enough time to do that, I'm still myself overall... but I would say that I learned a lot in that time - the country, the people I met, the communities we worked in - definitely left an indelible mark on me. Without an iPod, endless hours on a computer or even magazines to entertain me, I spent a lot of time thinking about the bigger pictures in life.

The last two points, I could say no better than Devon, another SIC volunteer who worked in my second village Marurani with me, has said himself below.

REGRET is wishing that I could have done more, knowing that I could have, knowing that I didn't.

PRIDE is knowing that we did make a difference, testing over 700 people, teaching almost 8,000. 700 people who know their status, 8,000 who can protect themselves from the world's deadliest virus.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Everyone.
I wish you the best in everything you do :)
Love,
Stefanie