inklings of consciousness.

In South Africa, I awoke.

I had been in a deep sleep, one of those slumbers where the entire world can't touch you, where you're oblivious to the sounds of doors closing and people shouting outside your bedroom and someone at your bedside snatching your favorite book from your nightstand.

I didn't hear any of it.

But even though these slumbers can be so deep and all-encompassing, all it can take is a breeze to brush against your hair or a change in temperature or a whisper in your ear to slowly bring you to consciousness.

Consciousness. That's it, isn't it? The stuff of life?

After living in South Africa for four months almost four years ago, I began to come to. I began to feel the bed beneath my body and the blankets covering me and the pillow supporting my head. I wasn't wiggling my toes or opening my eyes and I still had no idea where I was and I surely wasn't moving about, but I heard the whisper.

"Enough, Ruth. It's time to wake up."




My mind couldn't comprehend. I had been tossed (quite voluntarily) into this deeply broken country which was in the midst of years upon years of healing, and the disparity was just too much to make sense of.

Gated mansions to my left, corrugated metal shacks to my right.  

No. This couldn't be.

I have seen destitution before. I have spent a year working in an inner city public school and have traveled to Haiti with an immersion group. In Hartford -- the poverty didn't nearly compare. In Haiti -- there was zero wealth to compare the poverty to.

South Africa felt totally, totally different.



It was also my first time living far away from home, on my own. I needed to be present enough to take care of myself. I needed to fly 22 hours there. I needed to obtain very foreign currency from my US bank account. I needed to get myself to class. I needed to be on my own in a first grade classroom, where Xhosa was the  main language. I needed to live in a house with ten strangers. I needed to be away from everyone, and everything, I knew, while navigating spotty internet and expensive cell phone service.

To be dead asleep while trying to manage these things is incredibly difficult.

Which is why I needed to wake up.



Slowly, bit by bit, without even being aware of it, consciousness crept into my mind. Table Mountain mesmerized me. The wild, natural landscape of KwaZulu-Natal inspired me. My two very best friends I had made supported me. The people of Cape Town taught me of their journeys.

And also, anxiety became a regular companion. A natural companion, amidst the disparity and confusion and just-awake stupor. As I came into being, birthing myself into this new world, my mind was trying so hard to keep up.

But something shifted. Hugely.



The thought of ever returning to South Africa brings immediate pangs of nervousness and anxiety and churning, and yet --

it calls to me, like a birthplace.

Looking through these photos from that trip soothes my soul, despite the anxiety. They remind me of how asleep I once was, how far I've transitioned out of that very basic survival mode, how much more conscious I am today. And how much more conscious I'll inevitably become tomorrow, and the day after that, and a year from now.


It's good to look back, and realize.