Hey there! Long time, no see. As per usual, that’s my bad. Apologies.
It’s been quite the busy few months here in Cameroon. I’ve started keeping track of the books I’ve read in 2017, in part just for fun and in part because of a reading challenge that my friends and I are attempting to complete, and I’ve found that I can tell how busy I’ve been based on the number of books I’ve read. For example, January was a relatively chill, 7-book month, while in February, with its fetes and exams and preparations for DEAR Day and the world map, I only barely managed to squeeze in three, one of which was a graphic novel. And then came March, where in the brief calm after Dear Day and before COS conference [COS = close of service], I managed to blow through twelve books. Basically what I’m saying is, if you need any book recommendations, I’ve got a few. Also what I’m saying is, time in Cameroon passes in weird ways. There are periods when it seems like I have no time at all, and then periods when it seems as if I have nothing but time.
(“Also what you’re saying,” I can hear you say to me, “is that in all this time that you were reading, you didn’t once take a minute to write another blog post?” Well. If you put it that way…)
I’ve spent a lot of time in this country thinking about, well, time. I’ve been here for nearly two years now — my service is coming to a close, and it seems like all anyone was saying at COS conference was some variation of, “It doesn’t feel like it’s already been two years!” And that’s true. It’s also not true. There’s this weird time dichotomy here. Two years have flown by, and if you were to ask me, I’d say it feels like it can’t have been more than a few months. But simultaneously, there have been weeks, or even individual days, that feel like they drag on for two years on their own. It’s a strange sort of discrepancy. Some days, it feels like “Oh my god, we still have four months to go.” And other days, it feels like, “Oh my god, we only have four months to go.” I bounce back and forth between impatience and…not fear, so much as apprehension? Dismay? That word for when you’re just not quite ready to leave yet, and you're not really sure what comes next.
I hiked Mount Cameroon right after COS conference, and while it was an incredible experience, let me tell you, there are some parts of that hike where you have plenty of time to think about the never-ending passage of time. I hiked it with two buddies of mine, and while one of them, Patrick, didn’t seem to ever tire, my other friend Daniel and I spent some time contemplating infinity while we walked, and then trudged, and then crawled our way across the beautiful and seemingly endless expanse of mountain (accumulating blisters and sore muscles every step of the way). Anyone who’s read or seen The Fault In Our Stars knows that some infinities are bigger than other infinities. We debated over whether counting footsteps to infinity, as Daniel did, counted as a bigger infinity than infinitely counting in cycles of three, as I did, or if interrupting infinity with these patterns of three even counted as an infinity at all. We discussed the passage of time as it stood on the mountain — that is to say, that time didn’t really exist as we walked, and more than that, that it didn’t really even matter. Whether or not time was passing, and to what degree, was meaningless — we would just keep walking until we reached our destination, and that was that. (I should mention that day two of the hike was really, really long. We had a lot of time to think about this as we suffered walked.)
This post is getting a little weird and abstract and philosophical and maybe a little nonsensical, but bear with me. I can’t promise it’ll all have a point, but I am at least going somewhere with this.
I’ve talked with some other volunteers about this, about the weird passage of time here in Cameroon. One of the things that a lot of us seem to agree on is that Cameroon, and our time here in Cameroon, sometimes feels like it exists in isolation. While we’re here, nothing else seems to really exist. Of course, theoretically, we know of course that things are happening in the rest of the world (I get enough horrifying news updates to be very aware of this), but practically, it feels like the rest of the world is in stasis. Like when I come home, everyone will be right where I left them, doing the same things, living the same lives, nothing having changed in the past two years. That’s obviously not true — friends have gotten married and had children, they’ve graduated and moved and changed jobs and travelled and all sorts of changes have taken place, are taking place, will take place. But I’ve just sort of missed all of that, being over here. It’s like how, in Peter Pan, Neverland just sort of freezes and stops when Peter isn’t there — so does the United States just sort of…not exist, when I’m not there. It’s just this fantastical country that doesn’t quite feel real. And it was the same when I visited home this past December — I was home and the States came to life, it was a very real and tangible place — but then Cameroon suddenly felt very unreal. Two years of my life suddenly just…disappeared. What had I been doing for the last two years? Did I actually do that, or have I just made it up? Does this place exist outside of my own head? There are these two worlds I’ve lived in that function entirely separately in my mind, and it’s hard to comprehend that they can exist simultaneously.
Maybe it’s the knowledge that my close of service date is fast approaching that’s made me so pensive; maybe it’s the start of rainy season, as I sit and write to the sound of gentle rain, a mug of coffee by my side; maybe it’s because I spent twenty minutes staring at a wall this morning without noticing what I was doing (and the fact that this is a fairly regular occurrence). Time and space are funny things. Other volunteers have often asked me some variation upon “Are you ready for COS??” and “How does it feel to be almost done with your service??” And I suppose this post is my answer to that. It feels a bit unreal, as does most everything I’ve done here. I feel like I haven’t been here nearly long enough to be already leaving; and I simultaneously feel like I’ve been here forever, and it’s time to move on. Regardless of how I feel about it, time marches on. As Hagrid so wisely told Harry at the end of Goblet of Fire, “What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.”
