Destinations

“Destinations are the places where we begin again,” I was so wisely reminded this week by one of my guardian angels.

It has been 10 days now since I arrived at this new destination. Ten days since I unpacked my bag in my new little place . Ten days into my new beginning.

I’ve always thought that 10 years made a decade, but in Sudan time, I think 10 days may qualify.

I don’t mean that 10 days here is an eternity and each one is exceptionally long and difficult. In contrast however, my decade feeling is only a positive one. The sand is soft in Genenia, and I feel like I’m gently sinking in. The place has easily become home in the days I’ve been here so far, and that makes it seem like I’ve been here longer than the number of days marked off on the calendar.

I bought a yellow curtain for my window and found an orange cloth to cover my desk. I’ve discovered the perfect place to hang my hammock, and today I finally hung up some photographs- staking my territory in sort of rite-of-passage way to call this new place home.

Two local women, Fatiah and Fatma are the cooks in the compound and double as my new friends and Arabic teachers. In the midst of my home-making today I showed them a picture of the beach in Florida which I was sticking to the wall. They pondered over it momentarily, I assumed they were admiring the beautiful blue sea, and then they pointed at the sand, and asked “Is this the road?”

Beautiful people in a very hot and dusty, but beautiful destination. Welcome Home.

"Faith is a process of leaping into the abyss not on the basis of any certainty about ‘where’ we shall land, but rather on the belief that we ‘shall’ land."
- Carter Heyward