missing neighbors

Last night i realized something else that i miss very much. Not fufu and njama njama--i can make a meal that passably resembles that here. Not the heat or plenteous sunshine, although i do miss those too. No, i miss the community.

Granted, it can be aggravating to live and work with the same people, but the community wasn't that tiny: a good hundred people or more. I did hang out with people with whom i did not work directly. Besides that, i was teaching: a most lone ranger sort of career even if one is on a team.

Several hours a week (if not per day) were spent talking about life, politics, history, and our work with a colleague as we sat at our adjacent desks and watched the students walk past our window. I'd exchange waves with people as we passed going to or from the neighborhood. I spent several evenings a week hanging out or grading papers with another colleague, and we ate dinner together several nights a week too (I'd prepare mine and climb up two flights of stairs to eat with her and her housemate). I had tea or just a nice chat with someone in the office, and could pop by on weekends to say hello. Those were friends for two years or even for only one, but the amount of hours we spent together is much more than what i spend with friends here, which is probably why friendships deepen[ed] so much faster overseas.

That doesn't happen here. I do not work with people, i work alone. I do not live with colleagues. My friends do not live upstairs or across the street. I could make friends with the people across the street, i suppose, and i should be more friendly than exchanging mere salutations, but there is also something to be said for the deep bond of a faith community and a shared goal (which most of my neighbors do not have as of yet, and they're hardly home too).

I miss that. I've realized that you can't really return to a place; i've moved enough to know that through experience. It wouldn't be the same if i went back to where i was: many people, including my best friends, are no longer there. One does make new friends and it doesn't take as long, but it is always changing. And in that same token, i was fooling myself to think i really could come back here and feel like i belonged. Who was it that said "You cannot step into the same river twice"? (Ah, Heraclitus. Next question: where did i hear that!?)

I even miss the shallow things, like greeting the elderly lady who sat and knitted in the sunshine outside her house at the foot of the road, and the little kids that would run up to greet any adult who passed.

Ah, it's hard. A new circle will be built, but it does take a dismayingly long time.