Five months

Being half way though a volunteer is both exciting and frustrating. On Thursday I realized that I had exactly five months until I was boarding an Emirates plane headed back to the States.

There are days that I love being here, I love the culture, the people, I adore my roommates and I am thankful for the distance from everything I have ever known. In those moments five months seems entirely too short.

I scoff at people who tell me that I’m lucky to be able to ‘take a year off from reality’ a sentence that I surprisingly hear quite often. Volunteering is not taking a year off, but rather a year on. In fact I would bet that as a volunteer more work is completed, more hours are put in and more challenges are faced. And to say that we are taking a year away from reality is making an uneducated statement. Reality surrounds me in its rawest form.

There have been days where it takes all my strength to pull myself out of bed. To know that I have to face yet another long day filled with frustration after frustration, death, exhaustion and putting the needs of my roommates before my own. It is in those days that the prospect of five more months is suffocating.

Just as the mid year slump was starting to really take its toll on me I was blessed to have three of my good friends from home visit. Christine, Meg and Liza were a large blessing in disguise. Of course for very selfish reasons I was happy to have them here, but their trip turned out to be much more than just being surrounded by people from home.

They were able to witness my life, something that words on a blog, sentences in an e-mail or conversations on skype can't quite fully capture. They were able to work at all three of my work sites and visit the homes of former patients who have since turned into friends. Through them I was able to remember a side of volunteering that I have recently shuffled under the rug; the joy that this opportunity provides me with.

While the girls observed my interactions with a patient I became embarrassed and frustrated that in her state of confusion it took me 20 minutes to get her to take her medicine at the Respite Unit. To later hear them say that they were impressed with my patience made me re frame my day to day interactions.

During our safari I was beyond irritated that our safari guide was chugging whiskey while driving us back to our hostel, an action that caused us to leave a night early, but to hear the excitement as they recounted seeing elephants five feet from our vehicle was priceless.

I was intimidated by their exhaustion and felt bad that I kept their visit jam packed with activity after activity, but sitting outside under the stars on their last evening in South Africa and seeing their tears when talking about how changed they felt and how sad they were to be going home made it all worth it.

I don't want to lie and say being a volunteer is easy, because it’s not. Every day I struggle. There are moments where I am bored with feeling useless at work, I’m sick of being polite, I’m annoyed I’m not making money and I’m over feeling guilty for spending money I don’t have on a chocolate bar just because I want one. There are moments when I hate coming home after a long day and feeling forced to be present within our household, or feeling like I can’t take the car to just get out of the house because someone else might need it. There are moments during each day (many more then I should so readily admit) that I want to take the easy rode and give it all up and head for home. Every day is a struggle of emotions, love, frustration, sadness, grief, heartache, passion, and contentment, but my friends visiting reminded me that is those emotions which make my time here such a special experience.

I am so thankful that I have roommates like Sinead, Becca and Mary-Kate who allow me to feel the way I feel and to be present and supportive every second of every day. And I am so thankful that I have friends like Christine, Meg and Liza who are willing to spend an outrageous amount of money, take time off from work, travel half way around the world, put up with exhaustion though my crazy itinerary and still find time to love me, to listen to me and to remind me why I am here.

Five months is a number. One that will ultimately approach faster then I can imagine. Just as my friends said before leaving, good day or bad day I am lucky that I have five more months at my disposal deciding where the next five months will take me is the hard part.