Passing Afternoon-Iron & Wine

I feel as if it is time for me to give you an update on the past few days here, although I know you don’t want to hear about my extremely exciting final exams and whatnot. The past few days have been a bit rough, actually, but I am doing better now. The news of Ryan’s death was just so unexpected, and it was hard to be here by myself when I really just wanted to get in a car like everyone else and drive home to Frederick for the funeral. Unfortunately, small details like finals and the Atlantic Ocean made this impossible, so I was stuck here regardless of how I felt. The feeling of being stuck when I wanted to be home was intensified by the fact that I don’t actually have responsibilities here other than finals now... no classes to wake up for, and volunteering and stuff is finished. Most of my days are spent in my room, either studying or not studying (which is probably more often the case) and as my friends all have finals at different times and are busy studying too, we don’t see each other much.

However, I think that I am getting past the roughest part. Although I am still sad and confused about what happened, I am remembering God’s goodness and sovereignty, and I can’t help but trust in him. There is a psalm that really helps me with this: Psalm 77. In the beginning, the psalmist is in distress and crying out to God… he asks if the Lord will reject him forever. Then, he moves into the second part, which is when he appeals to and remembers what God has done in the past. This leads to the end, when he is praising God for who He is. Its basically as if remembering who God is automatically leads to worshiping him. Its not that the trials or pain have gone away, but that the psalmist has regained some perspective, and I need to do that sometimes. Not hide the hurt or try to keep from remembering it, just remember who God is at the same time. 

So, this past week… like I said, mostly exams. I have taken three of them now, and now I just have one more next Saturday. This means that I literally have a week to do nothing. Some of my friends are going to Mozambique, and others are going to Cape Town or Zambia and Kruger Park, but I will just be chilling in Grahamstown. However, after a chat with my lovely friend Katy, I have decided that I am just going to bask in the fact that I would likely be busy and stressed out of my mind if I was home at this time of year. So, I am letting myself have a week of vacation like the ones where I go to VA beach and do nothing but sleep till lunchtime, read a book in the sunshine and watch tv. In fact, there is technically a pool here, so the only thing missing is of sand, Melissa Dorrance and strawberry desserts (all in copious amounts, of course). After all, I am in Africa, shouldn’t I be having some soft of vacation? Okay, technically I have a philosophy exam at the end of my “vacation,” but that just means that instead of reading a novel in the sun, it will be Strawson and Kant.

Also, I am not actually just lazing around all the time… after I finished my ethno exam Tuesday afternoon, I decided to take up my instructor’s offer to go to the drum class that he teaches in town. It was a fun, spontaneous little adventure… I took my friend M.E. with me, and we found the house in town, which turned out to belong to a secondary school music teacher and was full of instruments. And I don’t just mean the typical piano (well, there was a piano, actually), or a violin hanging on the wall… over the course of the evening, we pulled out an mbira (happiest girl!) and a karimba, which is like a slightly modernized mbira that can be mass-produced. In fact, there is a factory here in Grahamstown… they also make super nice marimbas there, as well as a bunch of other idiophones and a few drums. Speaking of drums, returning from my tangent... there were obviously plenty of djembes at the house, since that’s what we were playing but she also had a steel drum that her son played (and a drum set, but I was  way more excited about the steel drum) and after some cajoling, we convinced him to play it for us before we left. So much musical fun for one day! And by fun, I really only mean the djembe jam session, since the exam could hardly be described as fun. However, as someone living in the African Diaspora, I totally had the advantage when we got to the Americas, and I actually paid attention for the part of the course talking about Africa, so I was all set!

Anyway, I can’t believe how soon my time here will be done. Like I said, I finished my third exam today (I took it in the Great Hall… I was seriously not kidding when I said that exams here remind me of Harry Potter) and I have started cleaning out papers that I won’t take home with me, returning stuff that I have borrowed from people while I was here, and I even caught myself thinking about how I am going to pack everything up to go. Something about knowing that I can count the days I have left here on both hands makes me think of leaving the idyllic Africa in my imagination instead of the South Africa that has temporarily become normal life. Part of me wants to just stow away on a safari and be taken out into the bush somewhere, where I can chill with giraffes and leopards (the only two animals I have failed to find, besides hippos, which I decided were not cute or friendly anyway) for a nice long time. On the other hand, I have started getting excited every time I see screen shots of Washington D.C. during Bones episodes because I am going to be there so soon! I will be so excited to be home, and I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving and all the times after that, even if I don’t know what I am going to do with my life just yet. God will provide a job or will otherwise meet my needs just like he always has. In the meantime, I can quit worrying about where I am going to work over break and just look forward to some pumpkin products and gravy. Except not touching each other on the plate, obviously, since that would be unacceptable.