Tandem To-Dos

10,000 feet in the air and the plane door swings open, wind rushing in at every angle furiously filling the tiny cabin, and I inch eagerly towards the edge. Legs dangling, ears overwhelmed by static, eyes enraptured by heavenly clouds before me, I pull back and lunge forward, a triple somersault into mid-air, disoriented and smiling like mad. I can’t satisfy my urge to laugh, lungs struggling to find oxygen at 120 mph, but I manage to roll my eyes in self-deprecation, amused with my spontaneous decision to log skydive #2 on birthday #21. I do so tandem - comfortably registering as skydive #5,496 for Elio, my charming Venezuelan instructor – and after the rush we float carelessly through thick clouds in a few minutes of pure post-dive exhilaration. I whisper to myself in an enormous sigh “Happy 21st, kiddo.”

The euphoric peace of skydiving was one of countless birthday blessings I received over the past several days. My family here – Work the World staff (Marion and Baptista), medics living at the House, friends in Arusha and most recently and selflessly, my volunteer team – spoiled me completely with thoughtfulness and love. I returned home on Thursday to find bright balloons filling the canopy top of my mosquito net, welcomed by homemade posters and the olfactory delight of fragrant yellow roses. Despite the busy schedule I have arranged, they managed to secretly buy me gifts – Tangawizi bottle cap earrings (my favorite local soda), Ghana-colored bead hoop earrings (they’re well versed in my Accra obsessions), 2 key chains, and a photo frame carved from ebony wood, containing a handwritten recipe for my favorite Tanzanian dish, Ndizi. Knowing they would be on a pre-booked safari on my actual birthday, and aware of my last minute diving plans, they inscribed each of their names on the inside of a beaded anklet for me to wear “so that we’ll be with you!”

We trekked up to the WTW House for a birthday BBQ – medic Sarah was also celebrating – and my dear Marion, who has been fighting illness for a week, added to her already time-consuming feast creation an extravagant flower arrangement of bursting rosebuds and bold daisies, a draped and decorated veranda, and a sugary-sweet birthday cake - anything besides fruit for treats is rare here, and I had more than my fair share, savoring the sweet granules grating satisfyingly across my tongue. Prohibited from paying a cent the entire evening at ViaVia, my favorite local live music bar, we danced, laughed, and drank through our midnight countdown, when bartend Mr. Bean brought me over a special cocktail as the band serenaded our crew with a bongo-flava style “happy birthday”.

Late on Friday, a surprise ring from my KCA family moved me to tears of happiness beyond my control. I dragged out our good-byes with “Asante sana”s and “I love you”s, and after reluctantly pressing down C to end the call, I realized, a bit disheartened with myself, that I had not mentioned a single thing about the Programme, my entire ‘purpose’ of pausing from KCA to come here. No updates on work progress, lessons learned, relevant experiences. But I shook off the oncoming bout of work-a-holism and reassured myself that it was not a business call but a family check-in.

But the feeling crept back up again the next morning when, in an involuntary reaction of human foolishness, I proved how easily I receive and then tend to forget the selflessness and generosity of others. I sat down to a pile of Programme work after diligently following the strictly enforced no-work birthday policy, and immediately felt tied down by to-dos. Typing furiously, surrounded by surveys, contracts, budgets and worksheets, I gave precious Marion a cold shoulder as she (obnoxiously, I thought, at the moment) hung about me to see what I was doing on my laptop. Marion who goes out of her way for me; Marion with whom I made a birthday-slumber-party pact sharing a tiny twin bed that “people should always come first”, that we are sisters forever.

Not even 24 hours away from overabundance of love and I did my Kate thing! I made her feel like she was annoying and bothering and distracting me so that she would go away without me having to be outright rude and say it.

She read my body language and walked away, still smiling of course, and my stomach dropped out. “Lighten up!” I screamed silently at myself, immediately unable to focus on work. I know my inner instinct is to be lighthearted, but I have been unable to remove the guise I’ve been designing over the past several years, a mask of false purpose, proclaiming to the world (and anyone who blocks my progress), “This is really important work I’m doing!” simultaneously generating and excusing my aloofness and rudeness.

How selfish, I think, disgusted. I’m so obsessed with how much I am capable of doing that I forget everything that others have already done and continue to do for me. I jump out of a plane without a single care or worry, yet I can’t drag myself away from my laptop without a string of tasks still dangling from my fingers and cluttering my brain?

I apologize to Marion, and of course she is forgiving, but I make myself a promise that rather than allow my to-do list dictate my schedule, control my happiness, and consume my thoughts (How many birds can I kill with one stone?), I will understand my to-do list as humble, self-prescribed how-tos towards achieving even bigger goals than I can put into words.

I test my thesis on Sunday morning as I venture off at 5:45 am to Anna’s home in Tengeru to prepare for and celebrate her niece’s first communion. I am trusting that if I dedicate myself to Anna’s family for a day, I/the Programme will wake up Monday morning, unharmed, and I banish my to-dos out from my brain, continually reminding myself that I don’t personally check the parachute.

I basked gratefully in invisibility, quite hard to come by as an mzungu in Arusha, as Anna explained to her family that I have come to help (“Napenda kupika!” “I just like to cook!”, I assure them) and am honored to share the day with them. The teasing quickly faded away over the 6 hours spent working over three open fires in the front yard. From chilly morning through the pounding midday sunshine, I sat and peeled chandeliers full of ripe green bananas, hands covered in sticky glue that I peeled off like dried Elmer’s by the time we had filled two enormous basins. Waterlogged hands as my cutting board, I diligently sliced tomatoes, peeled carrots, skinned root ginger, chopped peppers. I listened intently and tried to follow conversations, and without a to-do in mind, I accomplished so much more than I could have ever scheduled in for the day.

One of the most common questions I field from students and project partners in Arusha and in Accra is wondering why, despite the media campaigns and education programmes in, AIDS is still stigmatized and spreading in Africa, and not such a crisis in my homeland. Though a laundry list of potential reasons and opinions continues to build in international literature, I discovered quite a few powerful anecdotes by sitting silently and cooking quietly with these batik-wrapped mamas.

Looking up from my peeling, I note the suffocated goat hanging from the rusty tin fence, his slit throat dripping blood onto the ground. Cooking here is certainly just as sanitary, everything boiled and cooked properly, but preparations are not in strict standards –machetes and knives lie about, used and reused on any item, everything is done by hand, sans blenders, toasters, electric stoves. I can make a bit more sense out of the hesitancy to share meals with people who have AIDS, eating in a place where food is prepared as such and take-out is not a back-up option, consequently leading to a social stigma that can spiral out of control.

Now and then the mamas riddle me with a few questions in Kiswahili, most expressing a shock and disapproval that I am twenty-one and not yet married. They relentlessly try to set me up with Anna’s nephew, Derrick, even introducing me to his parents as Derrick’s fiancé. (I have never met Derrick, for the record. He might even spell his name Derek, for all I know). The overbearing expectation of marriage and child rearing settles in my mind, and I think to last week’s sexual health session in schools. An overflow of curiosity in our anonymous question exercise regarding the ‘proper’ age for sex and marriage may not have factored into my Cumberland H.S. sex ed, but plays a powerful role here in the effective communication of the curriculum and concepts.

Our army of women sat crouched over bubbling pots of n’gombe na wali, ladles as tall as the stirrer, pounding ginger and spices, and scooping out lard into the stews. All of their men – including Derrick, I’m sure - gather at the other side of the yard. Some are setting up a few chairs, most are lounging and chatting. The existence of pre-determined plans and priorities for girl children (the kitchen over the classroom) create a subsequent tension in the academic atmosphere. Stereotypes and superiorities (and inferiorities) are deeply engrained, and I felt a bit more responsible and ready to work after logging these observations.

I chopped, sliced, and diced as I put aside my list of to-dos with big empty boxes next to them, taunting me for attention. But just like I hopped into that tiny plane, never once thinking anything at all would go wrong or that I wouldn’t make it safe to the ground, completely undeterred and undistracted, I hopped onto that early morning daladala without a single regret, worry, or consideration of what else I could or should be doing. I had dedicated this day to Anna no matter the length or quality of the event that I knew very little about, and remained fully present, undistracted, involved…and it was, in a somewhat comparable way, exhilarating.

Later in the evening, over dinner, I am again surrounded by the laughs and love of my team who have returned home. Between their hysterical safari stories, my brain gets lost in the implications of an unshakable analogy to my fear of underachieving: the only fool who is afraid to skydive is the one who fails to realize it’s a tandem jump.