The process of letting go is almost always painful, particularly because it involves great amounts of change. When this letting go is of connections to people or places, most of us become fearful. We build communities, and when we leave their protective walls we feel raw and lonely for a time. We may feel a loss of familiarity and our sense of belonging. Simply put, letting go can be terrifying.
Although we can eventually transform feelings of loss into realizations of maturation, freedom, and growth, we have to sit with the scary and unknown consequences of change for a time. I will admit that I am currently in the throws of this process. How in the world do I move on from these two indescribable years in my tiny village in rural Zambia? How will I say goodbye to an entire community of people whom I consider my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and my best friends? How will I thank them all?
I hope that I sufficiently express the love I have for my niece Maya, the first baby I ever named whose smiling face has made even the hardest days worth it. When she comes running up the hill to my hut from playing with the goats and eating dirt just to give me a hug, I wonder if she feels me melt. I do not know how to fully appreciate my sister Ba Judith for pushing our clinic building project day after day for the past seven months, through illness and family obligations and an infinite number of village funerals. I do not know how to thank my sister Ba Erin for taking me into her hut during thunderstorms, or for killing five of the six poisonous snakes I have encountered either in my hut or hiding in my bag of charcoal. I do not know how to show the 72-year-old headmen of Chinene village how much it warms my heart to see him building our health post with his tired back and over-worked, calloused hands. It feels like there are too many people to thank, and not enough ways to thank them.
I recently had a Peace Corps friend who is at the beginning of his service visit my village. I showed him our building projects, our new preschool, and introduced him to my HIV support group. He met my Baneene, my host sisters, and my little nieces and nephews. He witnessed the heartfelt connections I have with my village, and his visit made me realize something important. My village and I have been thanking each other every day for the past two years. We have done this through working tirelessly together building a health post and a mother's shelter. We have lent each other cooking oil and candles, and we have spent afternoons sitting and talking out our problems under mango trees while shelling beans and cobs of maize. We have planted and harvested vegetables in the same garden, and we have waited out powerful storms under the same grass-thatched roofs. We have made each other laugh, and we have danced to the same music with chitenge around our hips. Some days we have annoyed each other, yelling too loudly under the mid-day hot season sun, and some days we have disappointed one another. But all-in-all, we have shared our lives, inspiring and loving one another unconditionally for 27 months.
I do not know if I will see my village in a year or in ten years, but I do know that we will always feel gratitude for the time we have shared and hope to share in the future. I can't make false promises that I will be able to call my host family every month or visit every few years. The beautiful thing about letting go, however, is that it doesn't have to be a black-and-white, permanent kind of change. It may be letting go of a certain type of relationship, allowing it to grow into something different and new. It may be taking a step back for a time, from a community or even from family, not to leave forever but to explore a more expansive sense of home. I trust that as long as I bring a positive perspective to the process of change, I will always be ok.
