The blank page

For today’s article in the Herald, I interviewed local PVCs in various stages of their service. Meghan Bridges is waiting for her final placement letter; Cheryl Light’s daughter, Amber Light, is in her seventh month of service in Cameroon; and Joan Womble’s and Jeannie Buie’s sons, both Davids, completed their service in Kenya and Malawi.  

Cheryl Light, Joan Womble, Jeannie Buie and Meghan’s mother, Sharon, are models of grace and courage. It can’t be easy to send one’s child out into the unknown.  

When I spoke with Meghan, she’d just received her letter of medical clearance, and I could hear her smiling over the phone. Her excitement embodied the innocence and joy of beginnings.  

Throughout my service, I wrote endless letters and emails to friends and family, and filled notebooks with scribbling. During my second year, I kept a blog through Elon University’s e-cast Web site. Recently, I wrote an article of reflection for the “Magazine of Elon.” And now that I’m home, in a constant test of everyone’s patience, I’ve become skilled at working Namibia into conversations on any topic: “Oh, you work in real estate? I lived in a house in Namibia.” “You like Italian food? I ate food in Namibia.” 

In the midst of all this reflection, my conversation with Meghan made me think of my own beginning.

When I found out I would be going to Namibia as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was in a kayak on Lake Union in Seattle. It was a perfect September day: still water beneath a cloudless blue sky; Gasworks Park crowded with families flying kites; and me, bobbing around in the lake, wishing I hadn’t paddled quite so enthusiastically, or so far away, from the dock. 

Visiting Washington, I was trying my best to stay busy and not think about the letter of invitation that was supposed to arrive at my home in North Carolina. I’d jumped through every legal, medical, and otherwise Peace-Corps-application-process-hoop—a process that, for many applicants, drags on for years—and was waiting for the letter that would reveal my destination, and my assignment, in November.  

My cell phone rang, and my mother told me the letter had come and I’d been invited to a program in Namibia as an Education volunteer. Our conversation went something like this: 

Mom: It says here ‘Namibia.’ 

Me: Nambia! 

Mom: Yes! Wait, no. Na-MI-bi-a. There’s a syllable in the middle there. 

Me: Na-MI-bia! 

Mom: That’s right! 

Me: Namibia! Wow. Namibia. So, um, that borders…what, Kenya? 

That’s right. I didn’t know where it was.

                  

Months later, I would stay up late to gaze at the stars of the southern hemisphere with the other volunteers in my training group, the 25^th to serve in Namibia. We would talk for hours, trying to learn as much as we could about one another before we finished training and left for our respective towns and villages all over the country. Through these conversations, I would learn that I wasn’t the only one who’d never heard of Namibia. I would even learn that one volunteer opened his assignment letter and thought Namibia was in the Pacific Islands. 

But on that September day in Seattle, my future was the blank first page of a new journal: I had yet to cram it into my backpack beneath an unfortunate wheel of Gouda and crate it through Fish River Canyon; to fill its pages with stories of the countless times my students made me laugh when I was trying so hard to be a figure of authority; or to press the tip of my pen against its pages, watching an ink blot spread as I realized some of life’s tragedies are best left unwritten. 

I rambled incessantly in this blog through the end of my first year, and all of my second in Namibia.  

Click here to get some fast facts about Namibia. 

Click here to read about Amber Light’s ongoing adventures in Cameroon.