Josh on being at "home" with the people he knows and loves . . here and there

Looking back at my time in Cape Town, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I had to travel halfway across the world and come to know a new place as home.  Since returning to the US, I certainly have come to recognize and appreciate more about the life I have viewed as “normal” for the majority of my life.  Upon returning to the US, I have a greater understanding that the life I have been blessed with here is by no means “normal”.  Perhaps it is normal for many of the people around me, but it is not normal for the “majority” of the world, if I may call it that.

           

So I wanted to talk a little bit about home.  One of the last conversations I had at my internship placement (IJR), was with a youth worker there – youth in South Africa is defined by someone aged 18-36, he was a few years older than me.  He asked me if I was excited to go home?  I told him that I was excited to go home to the people I call “home”.  I was excited to go home to see my family, to talk and share with them the experiences I have had.  But I did not have any personal attachments to the place I call “home”.  Growing up and living in an ex-pat community, my home became my family and not the place I was staying.  So with leaving South Africa, I truly was leaving a “home”.  Not a place, or location; but rather, a new “family” I came to understand as home for 3.5 months.

           

This conversation came full circle when my family and I were spending time together this weekend.  This past weekend was the only weekend my whole family will be together all summer, and we enjoyed catching up and spending time together realizing that time is become more and more “of the essence”.  While out to eat, my mom asked me if I missed South Africa and if I would rather be there?  Now, this is quite a tricky question to answer in front of the family.  My response was simple.  Home is where the people I love are.  Do I miss South Africa?  Yes, but not for the mountains, not for the placement, not for the soccer field I played at – certainly I enjoyed all those things, but I miss South Africa for the people I came to know and love.

           

So where does this leave me?  I am grateful for the time I spent in South Africa.  As I start preparing for my trip to Ecuador, I am enthralled at the opportunity to live within rural communities and experience life within communities that for so much of my life I have learned to identify as “impoverished”.  I aim to use the perspective I gained while in South Africa to come to love the people I live and work with and not to see them as “impoverished” or “marginalized” for I believe their worth in this world is so much more.