2 weeks ago, I went on a surprise vacation. As many of you know (thanks to my tendency to
obsess) I had a mysterious foot problem throughout my time in Mozambique so
far. It was getting worse (swelling and
pain) so I decided to talk to the peace corps doctors. They ordered me for the nearest x ray machine
that weekend – I asked off from work for a day, and planned to be gone for 4
days.
Well, it turns out that 10 is the new 4. After a 12 hour chapa journey and x rays and
a long, educational wait in the lab waiting room (AIDS is bad, according to
posters) I had a verdict: I had a formerly broken 5th metatarsal.
This means that a week of daily physical therapy (which manifested itself as a
foot massage and 10 minutes of ultrasound daily) would supposedly fix it. Miracle of miracles, I think it’s actually
better – which is good, because it took me 3 over-packed vans, 1 truck bed, and
15 hours to get home (a journey that should have taken 6 hours). Despite the transportation, the week was
nice. A lot of volunteers passed through
the peace corps office that week, and I was given a new best friend by peace
corps – another guy who was there for the whole week of ultra-sounding as
well. It was also nice to eat meat (ALL
OF THE GRILLED CHICKEN) and as I found real Oreos in a real grocery store, my
faith in humanity was renewed.
Surprisingly, I waited calmly. I only wished once that I had a functioning
ipod and I didn’t take a book out to read.
This provoked a realization: It took me 6 months to get good at
waiting. Without knowing it, at some
point in the past few months, I have surrendered and learned to (mostly) accept
the things that I cannot change. The
world will turn, I may show up to dinner late or on time, I may get home before
or after dark, I may fall off the back of a broken-down truck while the men try
to push it forward. And life goes
on. It’s a cliché in the Peace Corps: You get good at being bored. My level of patience and need to be
constantly entertained is still in flux, so expect a progress report in the
next 2 years. But I can already report
that the number of times I think “Ha de passar” (the Mozambican version of
“This too shall pass”) has increased at least tenfold. As it happens, that is exactly what the foot
doctor told me about my newly reformed 5th metatarsal.
