It’s April, well into April, and I can’t believe I’ve been
here for 3 months. This week has been a bit of a time for reflection. For the
first time since arriving I’ve started to miss the variety and complexity of
life in the UK. When I first arrived in Kiwangala, I loved the simple, basic
way of living here.
With all of my things fitting easily into one room, with
little clutter.
With the village just outside our front door, where there
are little shops selling vegetables and oil and sugar, and flour and eggs and
rice, and chapattis. All there, ready to be brought home to be cooked on our
little gas stove, in our outside kitchen, (or our oven!) where we have just enough
to cook with and eat with, but nothing extra to get in the way.
With almost everyone I know in the whole country, living
within 200m from our house, calling on us, to chat and drink tea and laugh.
With limited electricity, and no TV or internet to waste
hours in front of.
With our living room, an outside shelter with a big table to
sit around.
With the weekly market in Kiwangala selling everything a
Kiwangalan could need, and bustling, well into the dark every Saturday.
With my three small classes of students in school, consisting
of 13 students who I am getting to know better each day.
And I still do love all of these things. In so many ways
life here is more satisfying or something similar. But, I would kill for a good
theatre performance, or a proper coffee in an interesting art gallery, or good
bacon butty wrapped up on a comfy sofa, or a canoe on lake Coniston. Or a hot
bath on a cold day or a good shopping trip. And of course, I miss all the
people I could do these things with.
I have a feeling that, if I’d come home before this week, I
wouldn’t have appreciated all of these things any more than I did before I
left, because I hadn’t yet missed them. But the people who live here will never
experience many of these things that, back home I just completely took for
granted. They won’t ever have the chance to miss them, because, to them, these
things don’t really exist. That’s what is making me realise just how lucky I am
with my life in England. With the traffic, and the rain and the too many people
everywhere and the thousands of shops, all trying to get you to spend your
money. I miss the vastness and the unlimited opportunities.
Of course, one of the opportunities made available to me was
to come here, and have this experience, to taste this life, and I’m determined
to soak up every moment.
Enough.
